The maxims and reflections of Goethe

GIFT OF
A. P. c/lor risen

THE MAXIMS AND BEFLECTIONS OP GOETHE

GOETHE.

THE

MAXIMS AND INFLECTIONS

OP

GOETHE

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TRANSLATED BY

BAILEY -S'AU'NDEKS

WITH A PREFACE

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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1906

All rights reserved

COPYRIGHT, 1892,
BY MACMILLAN & CO.

S«t up and eleetrotj'pec?. Published May, 1893.
NCVA

J. 8. Cushing & Co. — Berwick «fc Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

CONTENTS

PAGE

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE ...... 1

LIFE AND CHARACTER ...... 57

LITERATURE AND ART 149

SCIENCE 181

NATURE : APHORISMS 205

INDEX 215

M103546

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

TRANSLATOR'S , PREFACE ,

. •»••<> • ,>' 'j !

THE translation of Goethe's " Prose Maxims "
now offered to the public is the first attempt
that has yet been made to present the greater
part of these incomparable sayings in English.
In the complete collection they are over a thou-
sand in number, and not more perhaps than a
hundred and fifty have already found their
way into our language, whether as contribu-
tions to magazines here and in America, or in
volumes of miscellaneous extract from Goethe's
writings. Some are at times quoted as though
they were common literary property. To say
that they are important as a whole would be a
feeble tribute to a work eloquent for itself, and
beyond the need of praise ; but so deep is the
wisdom of these maxims, so wide their reach,
so compact a product are they of Goethe's
wonderful genius, that it is something of a
reproach to literature to find the most of them
3

4 TRANSLATORS PREFACE

left untranslated for the sixty years they have
been before the world. From one point of view,
the neglect they have suffered is in no way sur-
ptfeirig : th6y lark too high and severe to be pop-
ular BO soon-; and when they meet with a wide
'.aijcie^fcarice,'^ with othar great works, much of
'it Will rest upon authority. But even for the
deeper side of his writings, Goethe has not been
denied a fair measure of popular success. No
other author of the last two centuries holds so
high a place, or, as an inevitable consequence,
has been attacked by so large an army of editors
and commentators ; and it might well be supposed
by now that no corner of his work, and least
of all one of the best, had remained almost un-
noticed, and to the majority unknown. Many
of these maxims were early translated into
French, but with little success; and even in
Germany it was only so late as the year 1870
that they appeared in a separate form, with the
addition of some sort of critical comment and a
brief explanation of their origin and history.1
But although to what is called the reading

1 Goethe's Spruche in Prosa : zum ersten Mai erlautert
und auf ihre Quellen zurtickgefuhrt von G. v. Loeper,
Berlin, 1870. This forms the text of the translation.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 5

public these maxims are as yet, no less in fact
than in metaphor, a closed book, its pages have
long been a source of profit and delight to some
of those who are best able to estimate their
value. What that value is, I shall presently
endeavour to explain. No one, I think, can
perceive their worth without also discerning
how nearly they touch the needs of our own
day, and how greatly they may help us in
facing certain problems of life and conduct,
some of them, in truth, as old as the world
itself, which appear to us now with peculiar
force and subtlety.

It was in this respect that they were warmly
recommended to me some years ago by
my excellent friend, Professor Harnack, the
historian of Dogma, a writer with a fine and
prudent enthusiasm for all ennobling literature.
It is to him that I owe the resolve to perform
for the maxims, as far as I could, the office of
translator ; a humble office, but not, as I have
good reason to know, without its difficulty, or,
as I venture to hope, without its use. Of
many of them the language is hardly lucid
even to a German, and I have gratefully to
acknowledge the assistance I have received

6 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

from the privilege of discussing them with so
distinguished a man of letters.

To Professor Huxley I am also deeply in-
debted. I owe him much for friendly encour-
agement, and still more for help of an alto-
gether invaluable kind; for in its measure of
knowledge and skill, it is admittedly beyond
the power of any other living Englishman.
The maxims deal, not alone with Life and
Character, where most of them are admirable,
but also with certain aspects of Science and
Art; and these are matters in which I could
exercise no judgment myself, although I under-
stood that, while many of the maxims on
Science and Art were attractive, they were not
all of great merit. Professor Huxley not only
did me the honour to select the maxims on
Science, but he was further good enough to
assist me with them, and to read and approve
the translation as it now stands. The weight
and the interest of his authority will thus give
additional value to that section of the book, and
also do much to overcome the objections that
exist to making a selection at all.

For a selection is a necessary evil. It is an
evil because, even if it leaves the best, it takes

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 7

away something of a man's work ; if it shows
us the heights he has reached, it obliterates the
steps of his ascent ; it endangers thoughts that
may be important but imperfectly understood;
and it hinders a fair and complete judgment.
But in the end it is a necessity: we are con-
cerned chiefly with the best and clearest results,
and it is only the few who care to follow the
elaborate details of effort and progress, often
painful and obscure. There is no author with
whom, for most readers, selection is so neces-
sary as it is with Goethe ; and in no other kind
of literature is it so amply justified or so clearly
desirable as where the aim is to state broad
truths of life and conduct and method in a
manner admitting of no mistake or uncertainty.
When a writer attempts achievements, as Goethe
did, in almost every field of thought, it need be
no surprise to any one who has heard of human
fallibility that in solid results he is not equally
successful everywhere. In deciding what shall
be omitted, there is no difficulty with maxims
which time has shown to be wrong or defective ;
they have only an historical interest. But
great care is necessary with others that are
tentative, questionable, or obscure enough to

8 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

need the light of a commentary, sometimes
dubious; where for most of us there is never
much profit and always occasion for stumbling.
I count it a singular piece of good fortune that
the choice of the scientific maxims should be
undertaken by so eminent a judge of their prac-
tical value, who is also a scholar in the language
and a great admirer of Goethe in his other and
better known productions. For if a writer of
this immense versatility cannot always hope to
touch the highest goal, it is well that all his
efforts should be weighed in a later day by the
best and friendliest knowledge.

The maxims on Art were at first a matter
of some little difficulty. It is plain, I think,
that they are below the others in value and
interest; and in any collection of sayings
the less there is of general worth, the more
delicate becomes the task of choosing the best.
If I omitted them all, the selection would not
be duly representative, and it seemed likely that
some at least were worthy of being preserved,
if only to illustrate Goethe's theories. I there-
fore sought the best advice; and here again I
have to tender my thanks for assistance second
to none in skill and authority, — that of Sir

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 9

Frederick Leighton, kindly given under circum-
stances which much increase my obligation.
For it is my duty to say that Sir Frederick
Leighton had no desire, but rather reluctance,
to make a selection from maxims on Art which
he was often not prepared to endorse, or to
regard as in any way commensurate with
Goethe's genius; and nevertheless he did me
the honour to point out a few which I might
insert, as being of interest partly for their own
sake, partly also for the name of their author.

The maxims on Science and Art are, how-
ever, when taken together, hardly a fifth of
this volume. The others I have selected on
the simple and I hope blameless principle of
omitting only what is clearly unimportant, anti-
quated, of past or passing interest, of purely
personal reference, or of a nature too abstruse
to stand without notes of explanation, which I
should be sorry to place at the foot of any of
these pages. I have also omitted eleven maxims
drawn from Hippocrates On Diet; fifteen con-
taining an appreciation of Sterne, together with
some twenty more which Goethe himself trans-
lated from a curious work wrongly attributed
to that writer. It will be convenient if I state

10 TRANSLATOR'S PKEFACE

that I have thus omitted some hundred and
twenty out of the six hundred and fifty-five
which make up the section styled in the origi-
nal JUthisehes, which I translate by Life and
Character, the section which also contains the
maxims on Literature, now collected and placed
in a separate section with those on Art.
Sir Frederick Leighton chose thirty-five out
of a hundred and eighteen on Art, and
Professor Huxley seventy-six out of two hun-
dred and eighty on Science.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 11

II

Having thus acknowledged but in no way
discharged a triple debt of gratitude, it will be
next in order if I briefly state the history of the
work which now appears in an English dress,
before attempting to speak of its nature and
value.

The publication of the maxims belongs to the
later, that is to say, the last thirty, years of
Goethe's life ; and the greater number of them
appeared only in the last ten, while some are
posthumous.

It is impossible to say with certainty at what
period he began the observations which were
afterwards to come before the world in this
shape ; nor is the question of any real interest
except to pedantic students of such matters.
It is probable that, like most writers, Goethe
was in the habit of noting transient thoughts
of his own, as well as opinions of others that
suggested more than they actually conveyed;
and of preserving for further use what he had
thus, in his own words, written himself and

12 TRANSLATORS PREFACE

appropriated from elsewhere — Eigenes und
Angeeignetes. The maxims grew out of a
collection of this character. It was a habit
formed probably in early life, for somewhere
in the Lehrjahre — a work of eighteen years'
duration, but begun at the age of twenty-seven
— he makes Wilhelm Meister speak of the
value of it. But there are reasons for thinking
that most of the maxims, as they now stand,
were not alone published but also composed
in his last years. The unity of meaning which
stamps them with a common aim ; the similarity
of the calm, dispassionate language in which
they are written ; the didactic tone that colours
them throughout, combine to show that they
are among the last and ripest fruits of his
genius. Some were certainly composed between
the ages of fifty and sixty ; more still between
that and seventy ; while there is evidence, both
internal and external, proving that many and
perhaps most of them were his final reflections
on life and the world. This it is that adds so
much to their interest for as he himself finely
says in one of the last of them, " in a tranquil
mind thoughts rise up at the close of life
hitherto unthinkable ; like blessed inward voices

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 13

alighting in glory on the summits of the
past."

But whenever all or any of them were writ-
ten, and whatever revision they may have un-
dergone, none were published until 1809, when
Goethe was sixty years of age. It was then
that he brought out Die Wahlverwandschaften.
A few of the maxims on Life and Character
were there inserted as forming two extracts
from a journal often quoted in the earlier part
of the story. " About this time," writes Goethe,
as he introduces the first of these extracts,
"outward events are seldomer noted in Ottilie's
diary, whilst maxims and sentences on life in
general, and drawn from it, become more fre-
quent. But," he adds, uas most of them can
hardly be due to her own reflections, it is likely
that some one had given her a book or paper, from
which she wrote out anything that pleased her."
A few more maxims appeared eight years later
in Kunst und Alterthum, a magazine founded
by Goethe in 1816 and devoted to the discussion
of artistic questions ; and a larger number first
saw the light in the same publication at various
dates until its extinction in 1828. Some of the
observations on Science had meanwhile been

14 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

incorporated with two treatises on branches of
that subject.

Eckermann tells a curious story of the way
in which Goethe then continued the publication
of the maxims. Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre
had appeared in its first form in 1821. After-
wards, in 1829, Goethe decided to remodel and
lengthen it, and to make two volumes out
of what had originally been only one. His
secretary was employed to copy it out in its
revised form. He wrote in a large hand, which
gave the impression that the story might well
fill even three volumes ; and directions to this
effect were sent to the publisher. But it was
soon discovered that the last two volumes would
be very thin, and the publisher asked for more
manuscript. Goethe, in some perplexity, sent
for Eckermann, and producing two large bundles
of unpublished papers, containing, as he said,
some very important things, — " opinions on
life, literature, science and art, all mingled
together," proposed to him to lengthen out the
volumes by inserting selections from them.
"You might," he suggested, "fill the gaps
in the WanderjaJire by making up some six or
eight sheets from these detached pieces. Strictly

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 15

speaking, they have nothing to do with the
story; but we may justify the proceeding by
the fact that I mention an archive in Makarie's
house, in which such miscellanies are pre-
served. In this way we shall not only get over
our difficulty, but find a good vehicle for giving
much interesting matter to the world." Ecker-
mann approved the plan, and divided his selec-
tion into two parts ; and when the new edition
of the Wanderjahre appeared, one of them was
styled Aus Makariens Archiv, and the other
Betracthtungen im Sinne der Wanderer : Kunst,
JEthisches, Natur. The remainder of the unpub-
lished maxims appeared posthumously, either
in the Nachgelassene Werlce in 1833, or in the
quarto edition of 1836.

Instructions had been given to Eckermann to
collect all the maxims, arrange them under
different heads, and include them in appropriate
volumes; but he resolved to deviate from his
instructions to the extent of publishing them
all together ; and the alteration is certainly an
advantage. A slight re-arrangement was made
by von Loeper, who was deterred from under-
taking a more radical one, although he thought
it might be done with profit, by the consideration

16 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

that when a literary work of undesigned and
fortuitous : form has lived any number of years
in a certain shape, that fact alone is a weighty
argument against any change in it. In a trans-
lation, perhaps, where the work is presented
anew and to a fresh public, the change might
be allowable ; and I should have undertaken it,
had there not been a more serious reason, which
von Loeper also urges, against any attempt at
systematic re-arrangement: the further fact,
namely, that many of the maxims have a mixed
character, placing them above our distinctions
of scientific and ethical, and making it difficult
to decide under which heading they ought to
fall. I have, therefore, generally followed the
traditional order; with this exception, that, for
obvious reasons, the maxims dealing with Liter-
ature are here placed together; and as only a
few of those on Art appear in these pages, I
have included them in the same section. In
one or two cases I have united closely connected
maxims which are separated in the original;
and, for the sake of a short title, I have slightly
narrowed the meaning of the word Spruch,
which applies to any kind of shrewd saying,
whether it be strictly a maxim or an aphorism.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 17

Some little liberties of this kind may, I think,
be taken by a translator anxious to put the
work before his own public in an orderly and
convenient form.

The last section in this book requires a
word of explanation. It is a little essay on
Nature which is to be found with a variety
of other fragments in the last volume of
Goethe's collected works. Too short to stand
by itself, if it appears at all, it must be in
company with kindred matter; and as a series
of aphorisms, presenting a poetic view of Nature
unsurpassed in its union of beauty and insight,
it is no inappropriate appendage to the maxims
on Science. It is little known, and it deserves
to be widely known. I venture to think that
even in Germany the ordinary reader is unaware
of its existence. For us in England it was, so
to speak, discovered by Professor Huxley, who
many years ago gave a translation of it as a
proem to a scientific periodical. Perhaps that
proem may yet be recovered as good salvage
from the waters of oblivion, which sooner or
later overwhelm all magazines. Meanwhile I
put forward this version.

For sixty years this essay has stood unques-

18 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

tioned in Goethe's works; but doubt has
recently been cast on its authorship. The
account hitherto given rests upon the excellent
ground of Goethe's own declaration. The essay,
it appears, was written about the year 1780, and
offered to the Duchess Amalia. Some time
after her death it was found amongst her
papers, and sent to Goethe in May, 1828, when,
as he wrote to his friend the Chancellor von
Miiller, he could not remember having composed
it; although he recognised the writing as that
of a person of whose services he used to avail
himself some forty years previously. That at
so great a distance of time a prolific author
could not recall the composition of so short a
piece is not, indeed, improbable ; but Goethe
proceeded to say that it agreed very well with
the pantheistic ideas which occupied him at the
age of thirty, and that his insight then might
be called a comparative, which was thus forced
to express its strife towards an as yet unattained
superlative. Notwithstanding this declaration,
the essay is now claimed as the production of
a certain Swiss friend of Goethe's, by name
Tobler, on external evidence which need not be
examined here, and on the internal evidence

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 19

afforded by the style, which is certainly more
pointed and antithetic than is usual with
Goethe. But a master of language who
attempted every kind of composition may well
have attempted this ; and even those who credit
an otherwise unknown person with the actual
writing of the essay candidly admit that it is
based upon conversations with Goethe. It is so
clearly inspired with his genius that he can
hardly be forced to yield the credit of it to
another.

20 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

HI

It is no wish or business of mine to introduce
these maxims by adding one more to the
innumerable essays, some of them admirable,
which have been written on Goethe. I have
found the translation of one of his works a
harder and certainly a more profitable task than
a general discourse on them all; and I pro-
foundly believe that, rather than read what has
been written on Goethe, it is very much better
to read Goethe himself. It is in this belief that
I hope the present translation may help in a
small way to increase the direct knowledge
of him in this country. But there are some
remarks which I may be allowed to make on the
nature and use of maxims, and the peculiar
value of those of Goethe ; so far, at least, as
they deal with life and character and with litera-
ture. If Professor Huxley could be induced
to publish the comments which he made to me
as I read him the scientific maxims, besides
being the best of introductions to that section
of the book, they would form a keen and clear

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 21

review of Goethe's scientific achievements, and
an emphatic testimony to his wonderful antici-
pations of later theories.

Between a maxim, an aphorism, and an
apophthegm, and in a more obvious degree,
between these and an adage and a proverb, the
etymologist and the lexicographer may easily
find a distinction. But they are, one and all,
fragments of the wisdom of life, treasured up
in short, pithy sentences that state or define
some general truth of experience ; and perhaps
with an adage and a maxim, enjoin its practice
as a matter of conduct. In the literature of
every age there have been writers who, instead
of following a less severe method, thus briefly *
record the lessons taught them by a wide view
of the doings of men; from the dim, far-off
beginnings of Ptah Hotep the Egyptian to the
authors of the Proverbs of Solomon and the
Book of Wisdom, from Theognis and Plutarch
downwards to our own time. They give us the
shrewdest of their thoughts, detached from the
facts which gave them birth. But the pro-
fessed writers of maxims are not the only or
always the best authors of them. There is no
great writer who is not rich in wise sentences ;

22 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

where we have the advantage of seeing for
ourselves the train of thought that induced and
the occasion that called them forth. Terse and
pregnant sayings are scattered innumerably
through the pages of the finest poets, the great
orators, philosophers, and historians, wherever
they touch the highest level of truth and insight;
be it in the lofty interpretation of life, the de-
fence of action or policy, the analysis of char-
acter and conduct, or the record of progress ;
and then it is that large ideas and wide obser-
vations take on imperceptibly the nature of
maxim or aphorism, illumining, like points of
light, whole fields of thought and experience.
And the test of their value is that they lose
little or nothing by being deprived of their par-
ticular context and presented as truths of gen-
eral import. A collection of proverbs, shrewd
sayings, and pointed expressions, taken from the
whole range of Greek and Latin literature, was
made by the industry of Erasmus in his great
folio of Adagia; and perhaps some future
student, as diligent as he, may gather up the
aphoristic wisdom in the writings of modern
times. Goethe himself has in all his great
works a wealth of aphorism unsurpassed by

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 23

«iny other writer whatever, even though it be
Montaigne or Bacon or Shakespeare ; and say-
ings of his not to be found in this collection
are some of the best that he uttered.

The besetting sin of the maxim-writer is to
exaggerate one side of a matter by neglecting
another; to secure point and emphasis of style
by limiting the range of thought; and hence it
is that most maxims present but a portion of
truth and cannot be received unqualified. They
must often be brought back to the test of life
itself, and confronted and compared with other
sides of the experience they profess to embody.
And when a maxim stands this trial and proves
its worth, it is not every one to whom it is of
value. To some it may be a positive evil. It
makes the strongest appeal to those who never
see more than one aspect of anything, hardening
their hearts and blunting their minds ; and even
to those who could make a good use of it, there
are times when it may mislead and be dangerous.
Maxims in their application seem to need some-
thing of the physician's art : they must be
handled with care, and applied with discretion.
Like powerful drugs they may act with benefi-
cent effect on a hardy constitution ; they may

24 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

brace it to effort, or calm the fever of a mis-
guided activity ; but great is the mischief they
work where the mind is weak or disorganised.
As a medicine may save a man at one time that
would kill him at another, so the wise counsel
of to-day may easily become the poisonous
suggestion of to-morrow.

With writers who depend for effect on mere
qualities of style and ignore the weightier mat-
ters of depth and truth of observation, Goethe
has nothing in common ; nor with those who
vainly imagine that insight is a kind of art,
with a method that may be learned and applied.
By constant practice a man of literary talent
may, it is true, attain a fair mastery of language
terse and attractive, and then set himself, if he
will, to the deliberate creation of aphoristic
wisdom or a philosophy of proverbs ; mistaking
the dexterous handling of a commonplace for
the true process of discovery. The popular
literature of the last generation supplies a
terrible instance of the length to which the
manufacture of maxims can thus be carried, for
a time with immense success; and we have
seen how a few years suffice to carry them and
their author to obscurity. How different is the

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE ' 25

true process ! The maxim that increases know-
ledge and enriches literature is of slow and rare
appearance ; it springs from a fine faculty of
observation which is in no one's arbitrament,
and only less rare than the gift of utterance
which adds charm to a thought that itself strikes
home with the power of impregnable truth.
No amount or intensity of effort will alone pro-
duce it ; but to the mind of genius it comes like
a sudden revelation, flashing its light on a long
course of patient attention. " What we call
Discovery" says Goethe, " is the serious exercise
and activity of an original feeling for truth. It
is a synthesis of world and mind, giving the
most blessed assurance of the eternal harmony
of things."

It is, then, depth and truth and sanity of
observation which chiefly mark these sayings
of Goethe. It is no concern of his to dazzle the
mind by the brilliance of his wit ; nor does he
labour to say things because they are striking,
but only because they are true. He is always
in contact with realities, always aiming at
truth; and he takes a kindly and a generous
view of the world. He has none of the despair
that depresses, none of the malice that destroys.

26 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

There are writers who profess to honour a lofty
ideal by a cynical disparagement of everything
that falls short of it; who unveil the selfish
recesses of the heart as a mistaken stimulus to
its virtues ; who pay their tribute to great work
by belittling human endeavour. Goethe shows
us a more excellent way. Touched with a
profound feeling of the worth of life, the wisdom
of order, the nobility of effort, he gives us an
ideal to pursue and shows us the means of pur-
suing it. Out of the fulness of a large experi-
ence, unique in the history of literature, he
unfolds the scheme of a practicable perfection,
and enforces the lessons he has learned from
the steady, passionless, and undaunted observa-
tion of human affairs.

To Goethe these sayings were merely reflec-
tions or opinions; it is his literary executors
and his editors who called them by more ambi-
tious titles, so as to challenge a comparison
with certain other famous books of wise thought.
They are the reflections of a long life rich in
all the intellectual treasures of the world, in its
versatility amazing, in its insight well-nigh
fathomless; a life that, in his own words,
approached the infinite by following the finite

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 27

on every side. Such a man need only speak to
utter something important ; and we on our part
need only remember how wide was the range
of his knowledge, how full and complete his
existence, to set the utmost value on his
reflections at the end of it. But that he knew
nothing of the pinch of poverty and was spared
the horrors of disease, that he suffered no great
misfortune, and basked in the bright side of
the world, free from the ills that come to most
men, there was no page of the book of life that
was not thrown open to him. The things of
the mind, the things of art, the things of nature
— in their theory and in their practice he had
worked at them all ; regarding them as so many
varied manifestations of an eternal Idea in itself
inscrutable and here unattainable. There was no
kind of literature with which he was unfamiliar,
whether it was ancient or modern, of the East
or of the West; and the great spiritual influ-
ences of the world, Hebraism, Hellenism, Christ-
ianity, Medievalism, — at one or another time
in his life he was in touch with them all,
and found his account in them all. In mat-
ters of learning he was occupied with nothing
but what was actual and concrete ; it was

2S TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

only to abstract studies, to logic, metaphysics,
mathematics, that he was indifferent; in his
own phrase, he never thought about thinking.
There was hardly any branch of the natural
science of his day that he did not cultivate, that
he did not himself practise; geology, miner-
alogy, botany, zoology, anatomy, meteorology,
optics; and he made some remarkable discov-
eries and the strangest prophecies. To Art he
gave a life-long devotion. While still a youth,
he wrote an important essay on Gothic architect-
ure ; he engraved, drew, painted, and for a time
took up sculpture. In all the higher forms of
Art, with the single exception of music, he had
so much practical interest that he often doubted
whether in following Literature he had not
mistaken, or at least unduly narrowed, the
sphere of his activity. He was little abroad,
but no one ever profited more by his travels
than Goethe. Twice he went to Italy, and what
a change of mind was produced by that change
of sky ! Rome was to him a new birth, a new
conception of life. And besides Literature,
Science, and Art, he busied himself with Admin-
istration, with the duties of the Court, with the
practical details of the Theatre ; but out of

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 29

them all he learned something himself and
taught something to others. He lived the
fullest life granted to man. He had a youth
of the wildest enthusiasm and romance; a prime
of a classic austerity, of a calm earnestness ; a
majestic age of the ripest wisdom, when there
came to him, as it were, a second youth, with
something of the fire of the old romantic feeling
lighted up in him anew. And out of all these
prodigious efforts in so many directions, he
passed unharmed, and never lost himself. He
steadily pursued his own task and refused to
be drawn aside. He stood aloof from the con-
troversies of his time. The battles of belief,
philosophical systems, French Revolutions, Wars
of Liberation, struggles of democracy and nation-
ality,— these things moved him little or not at
all. But he is not on that account to be held,
as some foolish critics have held him, indifferent,
selfish, or less serious, or less complete a man
than his fellows. He did the best in any one's
power : he resolutely kept to his own business,
and, neither hasting nor resting, worked at his
own high aims, in the struggle not merely to
learn and to know, but to act and to do. He
felt profoundly that the best anyone can achieve

30 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

for himself is often the best he can achieve for
others. The whole moral of WilTielm Meister is
that a man's first and greatest duty, whether to
others or to himself, is to see that his business
in life is a worthy one and suited to his capa-
cities. If he discovers his vocation and pursues
it steadily, he will make his outer life of the
greatest use and service to the world, and at the
same time produce the utmost harmony within.
That was what Goethe tried to do in his own
person, and he laboured at his self-imposed task
with a perseverance, a real unselfishness, and a
determination entirely admirable.

It is almost the last fruit of this life of con-
centrated activity, the final outcome of this
indomitable character, that is here put before
us. And we shall find that to the complex
phenomena of the world Goethe applied no
other measure but reason and the nature and
needs of man. With a full consciousness of the
mysteries that surround our existence, he never
made the futile endeavour to pass beyond the
bounds of present knowledge and experience,
or to resolve contradictions by manipulating
the facts. In these detached reflections he
does, indeed, propound a theory and sketch out

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 31

a system of conduct ; but they cannot, like the
Thoughts of Pascal, for instance, be brought
under a single and definite point of view. They
are a mirror of life itself, and the inner and
outer facts of life in all their diversity. The
unity they possess is the unity that is stamped
upon them by the all-embracing personality of
their author, always and unweariedly striving
to make his life systematic, distinct, and fruit-
ful ; and to judge them as a whole, a man must
be able to fathom so great a genius. But to
every one in every walk of life Goethe has a
word of wise counsel, as though he understood
every form of existence and could enter into its
needs. In a fine passage in the Wander yahre,
he likens the thought that thus in wondrous
fashion takes a thousand particular shapes, to
a mass of quicksilver, which, as it falls, separ-
ates into innumerable globules, spreading out
on all sides. And while these sayings may
present thoughts in seeming contradiction one
with another, as the moment that called them
forth presented this or that side of experience,
their inmost nature is a common tendency to
realise a great ideal of life. It is little they owe
to the form in which they are cast; they are

32 TKAKSLATOK'S PREFACE

not the elements of an artistic whole which
must be seized before we can understand the
full meaning of its parts. They are a miscel-
laneous record of the shrewdest observation;
and to read them as they should be read, a few
at a time, is like the opportunity of repeated
converse with a man of extraordinary gifts, great
insight, and the widest culture, who touches pro-
foundly and suggestively now on this, now on
that aspect of life and the world and the progress
of knowledge. It is the fruit of his own exper-
ience that Goethe gives us; and we shall do
well to think of it as he himself thought of
another book, and to bear in mind that " every
word which we take in a general sense and
apply to ourselves, had, under certain circum-
stances of time and place, a peculiar, special,
and directly individual reference."

Goethe is no exception to the rest of mankind
in not being equally wise at all times, and in
the maxims there are degrees of value : they do
not all shine with the like brilliance. Some
of them are valuable only for what they sug-
gest ; of some, again, it is easy to see that they
appear as matters of speculation rather than
as certainties. They raise difficulties, ask for

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 33

criticism, if possible, correction ; or, it may be,
they call attention to the contrary view and
invite a harmony of opposites. Some of them
make a great demand upon our ability "to
understand a proverb and the interpretation ;
the words of the wise and their dark sayings."
Their value sometimes depends on the way
they are viewed, the culture brought to their
understanding, the temper in which they are
approached. We look at them, and at first
admire ; we change our point of view, and find
something to criticise and dispute. The ob-
scurity of maxims, as Goethe reminds us, is only
relative; not everything can be explained to
the reader which was present to the mind of
the writer. Some of them seem at first to be
of little interest ; on one side they may even
repel, but from another they attract again, and
win perhaps a partial approval. They seem to
move as we change our position, and to be
without fixed or certain character. But some,
again, are so clear and unmistakable, so im-
measurably above criticism or objection, that
like the furthest of the stars they have no
parallax : whatever position we take, their light
is steadfast.

34 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

Let no one suppose that in the main Goethe's
reflections on life had never been made before ;
that it was not so, no one knew better than he.
As a preface and note of warning to them all,
he reiterates the words of the preacher : " there
is no new thing under the sun." Yes ! says
Goethe, there is nothing worth thinking but it
has been thought before; we must only try to
think it again. " It is only when we are faith-
ful," he says elsewhere,1 "in arresting and
noting our present thoughts, that we have any
joy in tradition ; since we find the best thoughts
already uttered, the finest feelings already ex-
pressed. This it is that gives us the percep-
tion of that harmonious agreement to which
man is called, and to which he must conform,
often against his will ; as he is much too fond
of fancying that the world begins afresh with
himself." What Goethe means is that we shall
do best to find out the truth of all things for
ourselves, for on one side truth is individual ;
and that we shall be happy if our individual
truth is also universal, or accords with the
wisest thought of the past. It is in this prac-
tical light that we must view the maxims, and
1 Willielm Meisters Wanderjahre, Bk. L ch. 10.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 35

not as mere academic generalities. It is easy
to read them in an hour and forget them as
soon ; easy to view them with a tepid interest
as the work of a great author ; but no one will-
fully understand the value of any of them, who
has not experience enough to know its truth.
Well is it for us if with the experience we also
gain the truth ! If any one should say that
some of these maxims are very obvious, and
so simply true as almost to be platitudes, I
would bid him remember that the best educa-
tion is often to discover these very simple truths
for oneself, and learn to see how much there is
in commonplaces. For those who have grown
old in the world are never weary of telling us
that the further we go, the more we shall find,
in general, that the same things will happen
to us as have happened to others; and it will
then be our advantage if we have the same
reflections, best of all if we come of ourselves
to the same conclusions, as the wisest of those
who have gone before us ; next best, if we can
really and intelligently follow in the footsteps
of their thought.

But although the matter of Goethe's sayings
is not original in the sense of being new to the

36 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

world — while it was original for him, since
he discovered it for himself and on his own
path, their manner is something new, and their
range is unparalleled. Take any other set of
maxims you will, nowhere is there so wide an
outlook, nowhere so just an estimate of human
difficulties, nowhere an aim at once so lofty and
so practicable. Nowhere is there a larger,
stronger, healthier, more tolerant view of life
and the world, or an atmosphere clearer of
the mists that too often obscure and distort
our vision. And in their expression, nowhere
is there so little of the besetting sin to sacrifice
truth to effect. Goethe has none of the shallow
malice and uncharitable candour that with
writers of an earlier age passed for the practical
wisdom of every day ; and we need only con-
trast his maxims with the similar work of La
Rochefoucauld, Helvetius, and Chamfort, ad-
mirable as they may be in their exposure of
human selfishness, to determine on which side
is the greater service to mankind. How differ-
ent the views of the world taken by how many
writers! — the secret of it all is that the men
themselves are different.

It was said of Goethe that his heart, which

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 37

few knew, was as great as his intellect, which
all knew. Certainly his writings and not least
his maxims are a profound example of the truth
that in the last resort it is moral rather than
intellectual qualities that make great literature.
It is not to be denied that much may be done
by a mere facility of style, a command of words,
a fine taste, a wide acquaintance with the turns
and resources of language ; but in the end the
effect is produced by the man himself, his char-
acter and his strength. To the strenuous,
earnest man, like Goethe, the world offers a
stirring spectacle and provides a great opportu-
nity ; and he grasps and uses them both to the
best of his peculiar capacity. It is diversity
of temperament dealing with partial knowledge
that makes so many and such various doctrines.
A man's views of life are, in short, those which
he deserves to have, and his writings are cast
in the mould of his character. It is no more
strange that the authors of books should give
us such varied pictures of the humanity around
us, than that painters should conceive natural
objects so differently. Literature, too, is like
a gallery of landscape and portrait: it is the
same world which is presented, the same men

38 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

and things ; but the way of looking at it varies
with the artist ; who, whatever his training may
have been, will see in Nature what he brings
to it himself. Ars est homo additus naturce.
If this be truly to define the essence and method
of Art, it is equally true to say that Literature
is man added to life ; and, here as there, every-
thing depends on the character and capacity
of the man.

No one has as yet said that he doubts Goethe's
capacity, although there are many who have
solemnly pronounced him uninteresting. The
critic who can read Goethe's works with real
attention, and then venture to call them dull,
is simply showing that he has no call to the
office he assumes, or no interest in literature of
the highest class. What is true, of course, is
that Goethe is profoundly serious, and he is,
therefore, not always entertaining ; but that is
enough to make him pass for dull in the eyes
of those who take literature only as a pastime,
— a substitute for a cigar, or something to lull
them to sleep when they are tired. But another
and more formidable accusation is made against
Goethe which affects his character, and would
go far to destroy the value of his writings if it

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 39

were true ; but to many it is curiously inconsis-
tent with the other charge of being dull. It
is that he is immoral. Now of all the great
writers of the world, Goethe is admittedly the
greatest teacher. He is essentially and frankly
didactic ; and nowhere is there so large and
worthy a body of literature from a single pen
which is informed with so high and so serious a
purpose. Roundly to call its author immoral
is a charge which sufficiently refutes itself by
its own ignorance and absurdity. The charge
comes, as a rule, from those who judge life by
the needs and duties of a young girl, and they
confound the whole of morality — character and
conduct in all relations to one's fellow-men —
with one section of it. They forget that Goethe
was a man of the old regime ; that his faults
were those of his time and class. They forget
that an extreme repugnance to all monasticism,
asceticism, and Roman Catholicism in general,
naturally led him to pay a diminished regard to
the one virtue of which the Christian world is
sometimes apt to exaggerate the importance, and
on which it is often ready to hang all the law and
the prophets. To some, again, Goethe appears
to be a supremely selfish wizard, dissecting

40 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

human passion in the coldest blood, and making
poetical capital out of the emotional tortures he
caused in others. This, too, is a charge which
the merest acquaintance with his life and work
must of necessity refute : it is too simple a
slander to be seriously discussed. Since these
are charges which have, however, kept many
estimable people from reading Goethe, it may
be some consolation to them to know that the
maxims are entirely free from any possibility
of objection on this ground.

The element of moral teaching which runs
through Goethe's mature works like a golden
thread, re-appears in the maxims free and de-
tached from the poetic and romantic environ-
ment which in such varied shapes is woven
around it in Werther, Tasso, Meister, above
all in Faust. To do the next duty; to meet
the claims of each day ; to persist with a single
mind and unwearied effort on a definite, posi-
tive,, productive path ; cheerfully to renounce
what is denied us, and vigorously to make the
best of what we have ; to restrain vague desires
and uncertain aims ; to cease bewailing the
vanity of all things and the fleeting nature of
this our world, and do what we can to make

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 41

our stay in it of lasting use, — these are lessons
which will always be needed, and all the more
needed as life becomes increasingly complex.
They are taught in the maxims with a great
variety of application, and nowhere so concisely
summarised as in one of them. " The mind
endowed with active powers," so it runs, " and
keeping with a practical object to the task that
lies nearest, is the worthiest there is on earth."

Goethe has been called, and with truth, the
prophet of culture; but the word is often mis-
understood. We cannot too clearly see that
what is here meant is not a mere range of
intellectual knowledge, pursued with idolatrous
devotion : it is moral discipline, a practical en-
deavour, forming wise thought and noble char-
acter. And this is the product, not of learning,
but of work : if we are to know and realise
what there is in us, and make the best of it,
our aim must be practical and creative. " Let
every man," he urges, " ask himself with which
of his faculties he can and will somehow influ-
ence his age." And again : " From this time
forward, if a man does not apply himself to
some art or handiwork, he will be in a bad way.
In the rapid changes of the world, knowledge is

42 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

no longer a furtherance. By the time a man
has taken note of everything, he has lost him-
self." The culture of which he speaks is not
mainly intellectual. We use the word in a way
that is apt to limit and conceal its meaning,
and we often apply it to a strange form of
mental growth, at once stunted and overfed, to
which, if we may judge by its fruits, any breath
of real culture would be fatal. It has nothing
to do with learning in the general and narrow
sense of the word, or with the often pernicious
effects of mere learning. In the language of
the hour we are wont to give the exclusive
name of culture to a wide acquaintance with
books and languages ; whether or not it results,
as it has before now resulted, in a want of
culture in character and outward demeanour,
in airs of conceit, in foolish arrogance, in malice
and acrimony.

A uniform activity with a moral aim -
that, in Goethe's view, is the highest we can
achieve in life. " Character in matters great
and small consists," he says, "in a man steadily
pursuing the things of which he feels him-
self capable." It is the gospel of work: our
endeavour must be to realise our best self in

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 43

deed and action; to strive until our person-
ality attains, in Aristotle's word, its entelechy,
its full development. By this alone can we
resolve all the doubts and hesitations and con-
flicts within that undermine and destroy the
soul. "Try to do your duty, and you will
know at once what you are worth." And with
all our doing, what should be the goal of our
activity? In no wise our own self, our own
weal. " A man is happy only when he delights
in the goodwill of others," and we must of a
truth " give up existence in order to exist " ;
we must never suppose that happiness is iden-
tical with personal welfare. In the moral sphere
we need, as Kant taught, a categorical impera-
tive; but, says Goethe, that is not the end of
the matter; it is only the beginning. We must
widen our conception of duty and recognise a
perfect morality only "where a man loves what
he commands himself to do." " Voluntary de-
pendence is the best state, and how should
that be possible without love?" And just in
the same sense Goethe refuses to regard all self-
denial as virtuous, but only the self-denial that
leads to some useful end. All other forms of
it are immoral, since they stunt and cramp the

44 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

free development of what is best in us — the
desire, namely, to deal effectively with our
present life, and make the most and fairest
of it.

And here it is that Goethe's moral code is
fused with his religious belief. "Piety," he
says, " is not an end but a means : a means of
attaining the highest culture by the purest tran-
quillity of soul." This is the piety he preaches ;
not the morbid introspection that leads to no
useful end, the state of brooding melancholy, the
timorous self-abasement, the anxious speculation
as to some other condition of being. And this
tranquillity of soul, Goethe taught that it should
be ours, in spite of the thousand ills of life
which give us pause in our optimism. It is
attained by the firm assurance that, somewhere
and somehow, a power exists that makes for
moral good ; that our moral endeavours are met,
so to speak, half-way by a moral order in the
universe, which comes to the aid of individual
effort. And the sum and substance of his teach-
ing, whether in the maxims or in any other of
his mature productions, is that we must resign
ourselves to this power, in gratitude and rev-
erence towards it and all its manifestations

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 45

in whatever is good and beautiful. This is
Goethe's strong faith, his perfect and serene
trust. He finely shadows it forth in the closing
words of Pandora, where Eos proclaims that the
work of the gods is to lead our efforts to the
eternal good, and that we must give them free
play : —

Was zu wiinschen ist, ihr unten f iihlt es ;
Was zu geben sei, die wissen's droben.
Gross beginnet ihr Titanen ; aber leiten
Zu dem ewig Guten, ewig Schonen,
Ist der Gotter Werk ; die lasst gewahren.

And so too in Faust : it is the long struggle
to realise an Ideal, dimly seen on life's labyrin-
thine way of error, that leads at last to the
perfect redemption : —

Wer immer strebend sich bemiiht,
Den konnen wir erlosen.

And throughout the perplexities of life and
the world, where all things are but signs and
tokens of some inner and hidden reality, it is
the ideal of love and service, das Ewig- Weibliche,
that draws us on.

But this assurance cannot be reached by a
mere theory ; and Goethe is not slow to declare

46 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

how he views attempts to reach it in that way.
"Credo Deum! that," he reminds us here, uis
a fine, a worthy thing to say ; but to recognise
God when and where he reveals himself, is the
only true bliss on earth." All else is mystery.
We are not born, as he said to Eckermann, to
solve the problems of the world, but to find out
where the problem begins, and then to keep
within the limits of what we can grasp. The
problem, he urged, is transformed into a postu-
late : if we cannot get a solution theoretically,
we can get it in the experience of practical life.
We reach it by the use of an "active scepti-
cism," of which he says that "it continually
aims at overcoming itself and arriving by means
of regulated experience at a kind of conditioned
certainty." But he would have nothing to do
with doctrinal systems, and, like Schiller, pro-
fessed none of the forms of religion from a
feeling of religion itself. To see how he views
some particular questions of theology the reader
may turn with profit to his maxims on the
Reformation and early Christianity, and to his
admirable remarks on the use and abuse of the
Bible. The basis of religion was for him its
own earnestness ; and it was not always needful,

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 47

he held, for truth to take a definite shape: "it
is enough if it hovers about us like a spirit and
produces harmony." "I believe," he said to
Eckermann, " in God and Nature and the vic-
tory of good over evil ; but I was also asked to
believe that three was one, and one was three.
That jarred upon my feeling for truth ; and I
did not see how it could have helped me in the
least." As for letting our minds roam beyond
this present life, he thought there was actual
danger in it; although he looked for a future
existence, a continuation of work and activity,
in which what is here incomplete should reach
its full development. And whatever be the
secrets of the universe, assuredly the best we
can do is to do our best here ; and the worst of
blasphemies is to regard this life as altogether
vanity; for as these pages tell us, "it would
not be worth while to see seventy years if all
the wisdom of this world were foolishness with
God."

In Goethe we pass, as over a bridge, from
the eighteenth century to the nineteenth ; but
though he lived to see a third of the nineteenth
century, he hardly belongs to it. Of its political
characteristics he had few or none. He was

48 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

no democrat. As the prophet of inward culture,
he took the French Revolution for a disturb-
ance, an interruption, and not a development
in the progress of the world's history ; and for
all its horrors and the pernicious demoralisation
of its leaders, he had the profoundest aversion.
But afterwards he came to see that it had bene-
ficial results; that a revolution is ultimately
never the fault of the people, but of the injustice
and incapacity of the government; and that
where there is a real necessity for a great
reform, the old leaven must be rooted out.1
But he knew the danger of such a process, and
he indicates it here in an admirable saying:
"Before the French Revolution it was all effort;
afterwards it all changed to demand " ; and
this may be supplemented by his opinion on
the nature of revolutionary sentiments: "Men
think they would be well-off if they were not
ruled, and fail to perceive that they can rule
neither themselves nor others." And if he
had thus no theoretical sympathy with demo-
cratic movements, he had little feeling for that
other great political tendency of our time —
nationality; convinced as he was that interest
1 Gesprdche mit Eckermann, III. 4 January, 1824.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 49

in the weal and woe of another people is always
a mark of the highest culture. But apart from
politics there is one characteristic of our own
time in which he fully and especially shares, if
only for the reason that he did much himself
to produce it ; and herein he has influenced us
profoundly and is influencing us still. The
nineteenth century has this advantage over
every preceding age, that in it for the first time
honest doubt, instead of distinguishing a few,
has become a common virtue. Goethe is one
of the surest and safest of those who have led
the transition. " We praise the eighteenth cen-
tury," he writes, ufor concerning itself chiefly
with analysis. The task remaining to the nine-
teenth is to discover the false syntheses which
prevail, and to analyse their contents anew."
Of the aim of analysis and the proper course
of inquiry, no one has given a better account
than Goethe in what he says, in the words I
have quoted, about active scepticism ; and in
the sphere of morals and religion it will perhaps
be found hereafter that he has contributed, in
some degree at least, to the attainment of that
"conditioned certainty," for which, as we hope,
all our efforts are made.

50 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

In the maxims on Literature there is some
excellent criticism on literary methods, and
much that may well be taken to heart by cer-
tain writers of our own day. Goethe had little
but rebuke for the whole of the romantic move-
ment, which began in his old age. The German
form of it he thought unnatural, and at best
a conventional imitation of an earlier period;
and the French form, of which Victor Hugo
was then the rising star, he thought a perver-
sion of naturalism, an exaggeration of it until
it became insipid or merely revolting. To
Byron alone he gave the tribute of the most
ungrudging admiration: in the opposition be-
tween classicism and romanticism, he declined
to take him for a follower of either, but as the
complete representative of his own time. The
maxim that "the classical is health, and
the romantic, disease," may not altogether com-
mend itself to us now; but with wonderful
insight Goethe foresaw the direction in which
the romantic movement would lead. "The
romantic," he says here, " is already fallen into
its own abysm. It is hard to imagine anything
more degraded than the worst of the new
productions." If he could have said this two

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 51

generations ago, what would he have said now?
How could he have spoken without contempt
of those who make all that is common and un-
clean in itself a subject with which literature
may properly be occupied? These are the
writers who profess to be realists, under a
completely mistaken notion of what realism
means, as applied to art; and to them the
chief realities seem to be just the very things
that decent people keep out of sight. They
forget that in literature, as in all art, the domi-
nating realities are the highest Ideals. As
an antidote to this poison of corruption Goethe
pointed to the ancient world, and bid us study
there the types of the loftiest manhood.
"Bodies which rot while they are still alive
and are edified by the detailed contemplation
of their own decay ; dead men who remain in
the world for the ruin of others, and feed their
death on the living — to this," he exclaimed,
"have come our makers of literature. When
the same thing happened in antiquity, it was
only as a strange token of some rare disease ;
but with the moderns the disease has become
endemic and epidemic." Akin to these pseudo-
realists, and coming under the same ban, are

52 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

some of our modern novel-writers who do, in-
deed, avoid the depth of degradation, but try to
move the feelings by dwelling in a similar fash-
ion on matters which are not, and never can be,
fit subjects of literary treatment ; such as painful
deaths by horrible distempers, or the minute
details of prolonged operations. It is poor skill
that cannot find material enough in the moral
sufferings of men and women, and is driven to
seek effect in descriptions of disease and sur-
gery. Surely in any literature worthy of the
name these are topics which a richer imagina-
tion and a more prolific art would have found
unnecessary, and better taste would have left
undescribed.

To another class of writers — those who
handle a pretty pen without having anything
definite to present, or anything important to
say, Goethe has also an applicable word. It is a
class which is always increasing in number, and
tends to increase in talent. We may admit that
second- or third-rate work, especially in poetry,
was never before done so well as it is done now;
and still we may find some useful truth in a
distinction which Goethe drew for the benefit
of the minor poets and the minor prose-writers

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 53

of his own age. " Productions are now possible,"
he said, " which, without being bad, have no
value. They have no value, because they con-
tain nothing ; and they are not bad, because a
general form of good workmanship is present
to the author's mind." In one of the many
neglected volumes of his miscellaneous writings
Goethe has a series of admirable notes for a
proposed work on Dilettantism; and there the
reader, if he is interested in Goethe's literary
criticism, will find some instructive remarks in
close connection with this aphorism, and also
certain rules for discriminating between good
and indifferent work which ought to receive the
most attentive study. And the stylists who
neglect plain language for a mosaic of curious
phrase and overstrained epithet, may profitably
remember that, as Goethe here says, "it is not
language in itself which is correct or forcible or
elegant, but the mind that is embodied in it."

" Translators," he tells us, " sing the praises
of some half-veiled beauty and rouse an irresist-
ible longing for the original." To them also he
gives a piece of excellent advice : " The transla-
tor must proceed until he reaches the untrans-
latable." This is a counsel of exhortation as

54 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

well as of warning. It bids the translator spare
no effort, but tells him that at a certain point
his efforts are of no avail. But none the less,
Goethe might have added, the faithful translator
must strive as if this hindrance to perfection
did not exist ; for it is thus only that he, or any
one else, can do anything worth doing. On
methods of translation much may be said, and it
is sometimes urged, in a given case, that it is
not literal or that it is too free. A distinguished
writer has recently laid down that a translation
should reproduce every word and phrase and
sentence of the original as accurately as a deli-
cate tracing reproduces the lines of a drawing.
This is advice which may hold in the school-
room, but, I venture to maintain, nowhere else.
In so far as every language has a peculiar
genius, a literal translation must necessarily be
a bad one ; and any faithful translation will of
its nature be free. In other words, a translator
will err if he slavishly adheres to mere expres-
sion ; he must have complete liberty to give his
author's meaning and style in the manner which
he holds to be truest to the original ; and so, in
translating from a foreign tongue, it will be
well for him to have some knowledge of his

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 55

own. But he must guard against the abuse of
his position : his liberty may become license, and
his translation instead of being faithful may
be phantastic. The translator's first and last
duty is, then, to efface himself. His first duty
is to stand entirely at the point of view of his
author's thought; his last, to find the clearest
and nearest expression in his own language both
for that thought and for whatever is character-
istic in the way of conveying it ; neither adding
anything of his own nor taking away anything
from his author. The best translation is thus
a re-embodiment of the author's spirit, a real
metempsychosis. Nothing can be done without
ideals, and this is the ideal at which the present
translation aims. That it fails of its aim and
has many defects, no one knows better than
the translator himself ; and he can only cherish
the hope that where he falls short he is some-
times close to the confines of what cannot be
translated.

December 2, 1892.

LIFE AND CHARACTER

GOETHE.

LIFE AND CHARACTER

THERE is nothing worth thinking but it has
been thought before ; we must only try to think
it again.

2

How can a man come to know himself?
Never by thinking, but by doing. Try to do
your duty, and you will know at once what
you are worth.

3

But what is your duty ? The claims of the
day.

4

The world of reason is to be regarded as a
great and immortal being, who ceaselessly works
out what is necessary, and so makes himself
lord also over what is accidental.
59

60 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

5

The longer I live, the more it grieves me to
see man, who occupies his supreme place for
the very purpose of imposing his will upon
nature, and freeing himself and his from an
outrageous necessity, — to see him taken up
with some false notion, and doing just the
opposite of what he wants to do ; and then,
because the whole bent of his mind is spoilt,
bungling miserably over everything.

6

Be genuine and strenuous ; earn for yourself,
and look for, grace from those in high places ;
from the powerful, favour; from the active
and the good, advancement; from the many,
affection ; from the individual, love.

7

Tell me with whom you associate, and I will
tell you who you are. If I know what your
business is, I know what can be made of you.

8

Every man must think after his own fashion ;
for on his own path he finds a truth, or a kind

LIEE AND CHARACTER 61

of truth, which helps him through life. But
he must not give himself the rein ; he must
control himself; mere naked instinct does not
become him.

Unqualified activity, of whatever kind, leads
at last to bankruptcy.

10

In the works of mankind, as in those of
nature, it is really the motive which is chiefly
worth attention.

ii

Men get out of countenance with themselves
and others because they treat the means as the
end, and so, from sheer doing, do nothing, or,
perhaps, just what they would have avoided.

12

Our plans and designs should be so perfect
in truth and beauty, that in touching them the
world could only mar. We should thus have
the advantage of setting right what is wrong,
and restoring what is destroyed.

62 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

13

It is a very hard and troublesome thing to
dispose of whole, half-, and quarter-mistakes;
to sift them and assign the portion of truth to
its proper place.

14

It is not always needful for truth to take a
definite shape ; it is enough if it hovers about
us like a spirit and produces harmony; if it
is wafted through the air like the sound of
a bell, grave and kindly.

15

General ideas and great conceit are always
in a fair way to bring about terrible misfortune.

16

You cannot play the flute by blowing alone :
you must use your fingers.

In Botany there is a species of plants called
Incomplete; and just in the same way it can
be said that there are men who are incomplete
and imperfect. They are those whose desires

LIEE AND CHARACTER 63

and struggles are out of proportion to their
actions and achievements.

18

The most insignificant man can be complete
if he works within the limits of his capacities,
innate or acquired; but even fine talents can
be obscured, neutralised, and destroyed by lack
of this indispensable requirement of symmetry.
This is a mischief which will often occur in
modern times; for who will be able to come
up to the claims of an age so full and intense
as this, and one too that moves so rapidly ?

19

It is only men of practical ability, knowing
their powers and using them with moderation
and prudence, who will be successful in worldly
affairs.

20

It is a great error to take oneself for more
than one is, or for less than one is worth.

21

From time to time I meet with a youth in
whom I can wish for no alteration or improve-

64 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

ment, only I am sorry to see how often his
nature makes him quite ready to swim with
the stream of the time ; and it is on this that
I would always insist, that man in his fragile
boat has the rudder placed in his hand, just that
he may not be at the mercy of the waves, but
follow the direction of his own insight.

But how is a young man to come of himself
to see blame in things which every one is busy
with, which every one approves and promotes ?
Why should he not follow his natural bent and
go in the same direction as they ?

23

I must hold it for the greatest calamity of
our time, which lets nothing come to maturity,
that one moment is consumed by the next, and
the day spent in the day; so that a man is
always living from hand to mouth, without
having anything to show for it. Have we not
already newspapers for every hour of the day !
A good head could assuredly intercalate one
or other of them. They publish abroad every-
thing that every one does, or is busy with or

LIFE AND CHARACTER 65

meditating; nay, his very designs are thereby
dragged into publicity. No one can rejoice or
be sorry, but as a pastime for others; and so
it goes on from house to house, from city
to city, from kingdom to kingdom, and at last
from one hemisphere to the other, — all in post
haste.

24

As little as you can stifle a steam-engine,
so little can you do this in the moral sphere
either. The activity of commerce, the rush
and rustle of paper-money, the swelling-up of
debts to pay debts — all these are the monstrous
elements to which in these days a young man
is exposed. Well is it for him if he is gifted
by nature with a sober, quiet temperament:
neither to make claims on the world out of all
proportion to his position, nor yet let the world
determine it.

25

But on all sides he is threatened by the spirit
of the day, and nothing is more needful than
to make him see early enough the direction in
which his will has to steer.

66 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

26

The significance of the most harmless words
and actions grows with the years, and if I see
any one about me for any length of time, I
always try to show him the difference there is
between sincerity, confidence, and indiscretion;
nay, that in truth there is no difference at all,
but a gentle transition from what is most
innocent to what is most hurtful; a transition
which must be perceived or rather felt.

27

Herein we must exercise our tact; otherwise
in the very way in which we have won the
favour of mankind, we run the risk of trifling
it away again unawares. This is a lesson which
a man learns quite well for himself in the
course of life, but only after having paid a
dear price for it; nor can he, unhappily, spare
his posterity a like expenditure.

28

Love of truth shows itself in this, that a
man knows how to find and value the good
in everything.

LIFE AND CHARACTER 67

29
Character calls forth character.

If I am to listen to another man's opinion,
it must be expressed positively. Of things
problematical I have enough in myself.

Superstition is a part of the very being of
humanity; and when we fancy that we are
banishing it altogether, it takes refuge in the
strangest nooks and corners, and then suddenly
comes forth again, as soon as it believes itself
at all safe.

32

I keep silence about many things, for I do not
want to put people out of countenance ; and I
am well content if they are pleased with things
that annoy me.

33

Everything that frees our spirit without
giving us control of ourselves is ruinous.

68 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

34

A man is really alive only when he delights
in the goodwill of others.

35

Piety is not an end, but a means: a means
of attaining the highest culture by the purest
tranquillity of soul.

36

Hence it may be observed that those who
set up piety as an end and object are mostly
hypocrites.

37

When a man is old he must do more than
when he was young.

38

To fulfil a duty is still always to feel it as a
debt, for it is never quite satisfying to oneself.

39

Defects are perceived only by one who has
no love ; therefore, to see them, a man must
become uncharitable, but not more so than is
necessary for the purpose.

LIFE AND CHAKACTEE 69

40

The greatest piece of good fortune is that
which. corrects our deficiencies and redeems our
mistakes.

4i

Reading ought to mean understanding;
writing ought to mean knowing something;
believing ought to mean comprehending ; when
you desire a thing, you will have to take it;
when you demand it, you will not get it ; and
when you are experienced, you ought to be
useful to others.

42

The stream is friendly to the miller whom it
serves; it likes to pour over the mill wheels;
what is the good of it stealing through the
valley in apathy?

43

Whoso is content with pure experience and
acts upon it has enough of truth. The growing
child is wise in this sense.

44

Theory is in itself of no use, except in so far
as it makes us believe in the connection of
phenomena.

70 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

45

When a man asks too much and delights in
complication, he is exposed to perplexity.

46

Thinking by means of analogies is not to be
condemned. Analogy has this advantage, that
it comes to no conclusion, and does not, in
truth, aim at finality at all. Induction, on the
contrary, is fatal, for it sets up an object and
keeps it in view, and, working on towards it,
drags false and true with it in its train.

47

The absent works upon us by tradition. The
usual form of it may be called historical; a
higher form, akin to the imaginative faculty, is
the mythical. If some third form of it is to
be sought behind this last, and it has any
meaning, it is transformed into the mystical.
It also easily becomes sentimental, so that we
appropriate to our use only what suits us.

48

In contemplation as in action, we must
distinguish between what may be attained
and what is unattainable. Without this, little
can be achieved, either in life or in knowledge.

LIFE AND CHARACTER 71

49

^Le sense commun est le genie de VhumanitS?

Common-sense, which is here put forward as
the genius of humanity, must be examined first
of all in the way it shows itself. If we inquire
the purpose to which humanity puts it, we find
as follows : Humanity is conditioned by needs.
If they are not satisfied, men become impatient ;
and if they are, it seems not to affect them.
The normal man moves between these two
states, and he applies his understanding — his
so-called common-sense — to the satisfaction of
his needs. When his needs are satisfied, his
task is to fill up the waste spaces of indifference.
Here, too, he is successful, if his needs are con-
fined to what is nearest and most necessary.
But if they rise and pass beyond the sphere
of ordinary wants, common-sense is no longer
sufficient ; it is a genius no more, and humanity
enters on the region of error.

50

There is no piece of foolishness but it can be
corrected by intelligence or accident ; no piece
of wisdom but it can miscarry by lack of intelli-
gence or by accident.

72 MAXIMS AND [REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

51

Every great idea is a tyrant when it first
appears ; hence the advantages which it pro-
duces change all too quickly into disadvantages.
It is possible, then, to defend and praise any
institution that exists, if its beginnings are
brought to remembrance, and it is shown that
everything which was true of it at the begin-
ning is true of it still.

Lessing, who chafed under the sense of
various limitations, makes one of his characters
say : No one must do anything. A clever
pious man said: If a man wills something, he
must do it. A third, who was, it is true, an
educated man, added : Will follows upon insight.
The whole circle of knowledge, will, and neces-
sity was thus believed to have been completed.
But, as a rule, a man's knowledge, of whatever
kind it may be, determines what he shall do
and what he shall leave undone, and so it
is that there is no more terrible sight than
ignorance in action.

LIFE AND CHARACTER 73

53

There are two powers that make for peace :
what is right, and what is fitting.

54

Justice insists on obligation, law on decorum.
Justice weighs and decides, law superintends
and orders. Justice refers to the individual,
law to society.

55

The history of knowledge is a great fugue in
which the voices of the nations one after the
other emerge.

74 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

II

56

If a man is to achieve all that is asked of him,
he must take himself for more than he is, and as
long as he does not carry it to an absurd length,
we willingly put up with it.

57
Work makes companionship.

58

People whip curds to see if they cannot make
cream of them.

59

It is much easier to put yourself in the
position of a mind taken up with the most
absolute error, than of one which mirrors to
itself half-truths.

60
Wisdom lies only in truth.

LIFE AND CHARACTER 75

61

When I err, every one can see it; but not
when I lie.

62

Is not the world full enough of riddles
already, without our making riddles too out
of the simplest phenomena?

63
4 The finest hair throws a shadow.' Erasmus.

64

What I have tried to do in my life through
false tendencies, I have at last learned to
understand.

65

Generosity wins favour for every one, espe-
cially when it is accompanied by modesty.

66

Before the storm breaks, the dust rises
violently for the last time — the dust that is
soon to be laid forever.

76 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

67

Men do not come to know one another easily,
even with the best will and the best purpose.
And then ill-will comes in and distorts
everything.

68

We should know one another better if one
man were not so anxious to put himself on an
equality with another.

69

Eminent men are therefore in a worse plight
than others ; for, as we cannot compare ourselves
with them, we are on the watch for them.

•
70

In the world the point is, not to know men,
but at any given moment to be cleverer than the
man who stands before you. You can prove this
at every fair and from every charlatan.

Not everywhere where there is water, are
there frogs; but where you have frogs, there
you will find water.

LIFE AND CHARACTER 77

72

Error is quite right as long as we are young,
but we must not carry it on with us into our
old age.

Whims and eccentricities that grow stale are
all useless, rank nonsense.

73

In the formation of species Nature gets, as it
were, into a cul-de-sac; she cannot make her
way through, and is disinclined to turn back.
Hence the stubbornness of national character.

74

Every one has something in his nature which,
if he were to express it openly, would of neces-
sity give offence.

75

If a man thinks about his physical or moral
condition, he generally finds that he is ill.

76

Nature asks that a man should sometimes be
stupefied without going to sleep; hence the
pleasure in the smoking of tobacco, the drinking
of brandy, the use of opiates.

78 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

77

The man who is up and doing should see to it
that what he does is right. Whether or not
right is done, is a matter which should not
trouble him.

78

Many a man knocks about on the wall with
his hammer, and believes that he hits the right
nail on the head every time.

79

Painting and tattooing of the body is a return
to animalism.

80

History-writing is a way of getting rid of
the past.

81

What a man does not understand, he does not
possess.

82

Not every one who has a pregnant thought
delivered to him becomes productive ; it
probably makes him think of something with
which he is quite familiar.

LIFE AND CHARACTER 79

83

Favour, as a symbol of sovereignty, is exer-
cised by weak men.

84

Every man has enough power left to carry
out that of which he is convinced.

8s

Memory may vanish so long as at the
moment judgment does not fail you.

86

No nation gains the power of judgment except
it can pass judgment on itself. But to attain
this great privilege takes a very long time.

87

Instead of contradicting my words people
ought to act in my spirit.

88

Those who oppose intellectual truths do but
stir up the fire, and the cinders fly about and
burn what they had else not touched.

80 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

89

Man would not be the finest creature in the
world if he were not too fine for it.

90

What a long time people were vainly disput-
ing about the Antipodes !

Certain minds must be allowed their peculi-
arities.

92

Snow is false purity.

93

Whoso shrinks from ideas ends by having
nothing but sensations.

94

Those from whom we are always learning
are rightly called our masters ; but not every
one who teaches us deserves this title.

95

It is with you as with the sea: the most
varied names are given to what is in the end
only salt water.

LIFE AND CHARACTER 81

96

It is said that vain self-praise stinks in the
nostrils. That may be so ; but for the kind of
smell which comes from unjust blame by others
the public has no nose at all.

97

There are problematical natures which are
equal to no position in which they find them-
selves, and which no position satisfies. This it
is that causes that hideous conflict which wastes
life and deprives it of all pleasure.

98
t

If we do any real good, it is mostly dam, vi,
et precario.

99
Dirt glitters as long as the sun shines.

100

It is difficult to be just to the passing
moment. We are bored by it if it is neither
good nor bad; but the good moment lays a
task upon us, and the bad moment a burden.

82 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OP GOETHE

101

He is the happiest man who can set the end
of his life in connection with the beginning.

102

So obstinately contradictory is man that you
cannot compel him to his advantage, yet he
yields before everything that forces him to his
hurt.

103

Forethought is simple, afterthought manifold.

104

A state of things in which every day brings
some new trouble is not the right one.

'05

When people suffer by failing to look before
them, nothing is commoner than trying to look
out for some possible remedy.

106

The Hindoos of the Desert make a solemn
vow to eat no fish.

LIFE AND CHARACTER 83

107

To venture an opinion is like moving a piece
at chess: it may be taken, but it forms the
beginning of a game that is won.

108

It is as certain as it is strange that truth and
error come from one and the same source. Thus
it is that we are often not at liberty to do
violence to error, because at the same time we
do violence to truth.

109

Truth belongs to the man, error to his age.
This is why it has been said that, while the
misfortune of the age caused his error, the force
of his soul made him emerge from the error
with glory.

no

Every one has his peculiarities and cannot get
rid of them ; and yet many a one is destroyed
by his peculiarities, and those too of the most
innocent kind.

in

If a man does think too much of himself, he
is more than he believes himself to be.

84 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

112

In art and knowledge, as also in deed and
action, everything depends on a pure apprehen-
sion of the object and a treatment of it accord-
ing to its nature.

"3

When intelligent and sensible people despise
knowledge in their old age, it is only because
they have asked too much of it and of them-
selves.

114

I pity those who make much ado about the
transitory nature of all things and are lost in
the contemplation of earthly vanity : are we not*
here to make the transitory permanent ? This
we can do only if we know how to value both.

"5

A rainbow which lasts a quarter of an hour is
looked at no more.

116

It used to happen, and still happens, to me to
take no pleasure in a work of art at the first
sight of it, because it is too much for me ; but

LIFE AND CHARACTER 85

if I suspect any merit in it, I try to get at it ;
and then I never fail to make the most gratify-
ing discoveries, — to find new qualities in the
work itself and new faculties in myself.

117

Faith is private capital, kept in one's own
house. There are public savings-banks and
loan-offices, which supply individuals in their
day of need ; but here the creditor quietty takes
his interest for himself.

118

Real obscurantism is not to hinder the spread
of what is true, clear, and useful, but to bring
into vogue what is false.

119

During a prolonged study of the lives of vari-
ous men both great and small, I came upon this
thought : In the web of the world the one may
well be regarded as the warp, the other as the
woof. It is the little men, after all, who give
breadth to the web, and the great men firmness
and solidity ; perhaps, also, the addition of some

86 MAXIMS AND EEFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

sort of pattern. But the scissors of the Fates
determine its length, and to that all the rest
must join in submitting itself.

I2O

Truth is a torch, but a huge one, and so it is
only with blinking eyes that we all of us try to
get past it, in actual terror of being burnt.

121

'The wise have much in common with one
another.' JEschylus.

122

The really foolish thing in men who are
otherwise intelligent is that they fail to under-
stand what another person says, when he does
not exactly hit upon the right way of saying it.

123

Because a man speaks, he thinks he is able to
speak about language.

124

One need only grow old to become gentler in
one's judgments. I see no fault committed
which I could not have committed myself.

LIFE AND CHAEACTER 87

125

The man who acts never has any conscience ;
no one has any conscience but the man who

thinks.

126

Why should those who are happy expect one
who is miserable to die before them in a grace-
ful attitude, like the gladiator before the Roman
mob?

127

Some one asked Timon about the education
of his children. 4 Let them,' he said, ' be
instructed in that which they will never

understand.'

128

There are people whom I wish well, and
would that I could wish better.

129

By force of habit we look at a clock that
has run down as if it were still going, and we
gaze at the face of a beauty as though she still

loved.

130

Hatred is active displeasure, envy passive.
We need not wonder that envy turns so soon
to hatred.

88 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

I3i

There is something magical in rhythm; it
even makes us believe that we possess the

sublime.

132

Dilettantism treated seriously, and know-
ledge pursued mechanically, end by becoming
pedantry.

133

No one but the master can promote the cause
of Art. Patrons help the master, — that is right
and proper; but that does not always mean
that Art is helped.

!34

The most foolish of all errors is for clever
young men to believe that they forfeit their
originality in recognising a truth which has
already been recognised by others.

i35

Scholars are generally malignant when they
are refuting others ; and if they think a man is
making a mistake, they straightway look upon
him as their mortal enemy.

136

Beauty can never really understand itself.

LIFE AND CHARACTER 89

III

137

It is much easier to recognise error than to
find truth ; for error lies on the surface and may
be overcome ; but truth lies in the depths, and
to search for it is not given to every one.

138

We all live on the past, and through the past
are destroyed.

T39

We are no sooner about to learn some great
lesson than we take refuge in our own innate
poverty of soul, and yet for all that the lesson
has not been quite in vain.

140

The world of empirical morality consists for
the most part of nothing but ill-will and envy.

141

Life seems so vulgar, so easily content with
the commonplace things of every day, and yet

90 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

it always nurses and cherishes certain higher
claims in secret, and looks about for the means
of satisfying them.

142

Confidences are strange things. If you listen
only to one man, it is possible that he is
deceived or mistaken ; if you listen to many,
they are in a like case; and, generally, you
cannot get at the truth at all.

No one should desire to live in irregular cir-
cumstances; but if by chance a man falls into
them, they test his character and show of how
much determination he is capable.

144

An honourable man with limited ideas often
sees through the rascality of the most cunning
jobber.

M5

If a man feels no love, he must learn how to
flatter ; otherwise he will not succeed.

LIFE AND CHARACTER 91

146

Against criticism a man can neither protest
nor defend himself ; he must act in spite of it,
and then criticism will gradually yield to him.

M7

The masses cannot dispense with men of
ability, and such men are always a burden
to them.

148

If a man spreads my failings abroad, he is

my master, even though he were my servant.

i

149

Whether memoirs are written by masters of
servants, or by servants of masters, the processes
always meet.

150

If you lay duties upon people and give them
no rights, you must pay them well.

I can promise to be sincere, but not to be
impartial.

92 MAXIMS AND KEFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

Ingratitude is always a kind of weakness. I
have never known men of ability to be un-
grateful.

i53

We are all so limited that we always think
we are right; and so we may conceive of an
extraordinary mind which not only errs but has
a positive delight in error.

It is very rare to find pure and steady activity
in the accomplishment of what is good and
right. We usually see pedantry trying to keep
back, and audacity trying to go on too fast.

Word and picture are correlatives which are
continually in quest of each other, as is suf-
ficiently evident in the case of metaphors and
similes. So from all time what was said or
sung inwardly to the ear had to be presented
equally to the eye. And so in childish days we
see word and picture in continual balance; in
the book of the law and in the way of salva-

LIFE AND CHARACTER 93

tion, in the Bible and in the spelling-book.
When something was spoken which could not
be pictured, and something pictured which
could not be spoken, all went well ; but
mistakes were often made, and a word was
used instead of a picture; and thence arose
those monsters of symbolical mysticism, which
are doubly an evil.

156

For the man of the world a collection of
anecdotes and maxims is of the greatest value,
if he knows how to intersperse the one in his
conversation at fitting moments, and remember
the other when a case arises for their appli-
cation.

i57

When you lose interest in anything, you also
lose the memory for it.

158

The world is a bell with a crack in it; it
rattles, but does not ring.

The importunity of young dilettanti must

94 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

be borne with good-will; for as they grow old
they become the truest worshippers of Art and
the Master.

160

People have to become really bad before they
care for nothing but mischief, and delight in it.

161
Clever people are the best encyclopaedia.

162

There are people who make no mistakes
because they never wish to do anything worth
doing.

163

If I know my relation to myself and the
outer world, I call it truth. Every man can
have his own peculiar truth; and yet it is
always the same.

164

No one is the master of any truly productive
energy; and all men must let it work on by
itself.

165

A man never understands how anthropomor-
phic he is.

LITE AND CHAKACTER 95

166

A difference which offers nothing to the
understanding is no difference at all.

167

A man cannot live for every one; least of
all for those with whom he would not care to

live.

168

If a man sets out to study all the laws, he
will have no time left to transgress them.

169

Things that are mysterious are not yet

miracles.

170

' Converts are not in my good books.'

171

A frivolous impulsive encouragement of
problematical talents was a mistake of my
early years; and I have never been able to
abandon it altogether.

172

I should like to be honest with you, without
our falling out; but it will not do. You act

96 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

wrongly, and fall between two stools ; you win
no adherents and lose your friends. What is
to be the end of it ?

i73

It is all one whether you are of high or of
humble origin. You will always have to pay
for your humanity.

i74

When I hear people speak of liberal ideas,
it is always a wonder to me that men are so
readily put off with empty verbiage. An idea
cannot be liberal ; but it may be potent, vigor-
ous, exclusive, in order to fulfil its mission of
being productive. Still less can a concept be
liberal ; for a concept has quite another mission.
Where, however, we must look for liberality,
is in the sentiments ; and the sentiments are
the inner man as he lives and moves. A man's
sentiments, however, are rarely liberal, because
they proceed directly from him personally, and
from his immediate relations and requirements.
Further we will not write, and let us apply this
test to what we hear every day.

If a clever man commits a folly, it is not a
small one.

LIFE AND CHARACTER 97

176

There is a poetry without figures of speech,
which is a single figure of speech.

177

I went on troubling myself about general
ideas until I learnt to understand the particular
achievements of the best men.

178

It is only when a man knows little, that he
knows anything at all. With knowledge grows
doubt.

179

The errors of a man are what make him
really lovable.

1 80

There are men who love their like and
seek it ; others love their opposite and follow
after it.

181

If a man has always let himself think the
world as bad as the adversary represents it to
be, he must have become a miserable person.

98 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

182

Ill-favour and hatred limit the spectator to
the surface, even when keen perception is added
unto them; but when keen perception unites
with good-will and love, it gets at the heart of
man and the world; nay, it may hope to reach
the highest goal of all.

183

Raw matter is seen by every one ; the con-
tents are found only by him who has his eyes
about him; and the form is a secret to the

majority.

184

We may learn to know the world as we
please: it will always retain a bright and a
dark side.

185

Error is continually repeating itself in action,
and we must unweariedly repeat the truth in

word.

186

As in Rome there is, apart from the Romans,
a population of statues, so apart from this real
world there is a world of illusion, almost more
potent, in which most men live.

LIFE AND CHAKACTEK 99

187

Mankind is like the Red Sea: the staff has
scarcely parted the waves asunder, before they
flow together again.

188

Thoughts come back; beliefs persist; facts
pass by never to return.

189

Of all peoples, the Greeks have dreamt the
dream of life the best.

190

We readily bow to antiquity, but not to
posterity. It is only a father that does not
grudge talent to his son.

191

There is no virtue in subordinating oneself ;
but there is virtue in descending, and in
recognising anything as above us, which is
beneath us.

192

The whole art of living consists in giving
up existence in order to exist.

100 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

193

All our pursuits and actions are a wearying
process. Well is it for him who wearies not.

194
Hope is the second soul of the unhappy.

Love is a true renovator.

•

196

Mankind is not without a wish to serve;
hence the chivalry of the French is a servitude.

197

In the theatre the pleasure of what we see
and hear restrains our reflections.

198

There is no limit to the increase of experi-
ence, but theories cannot become clearer and
more complete in just the same sense. The
field of experience is the whole universe in all
directions. Theory remains shut up within the
limits of the human faculties. Hence there

LIFE AND

is no way of looking at the world, but it recurs,
and the curious thing happens, that with in-
creased experience a limited theory may again
come into favour.

It is always the same world which stands
open to observation, which is continually being
contemplated or guessed at; and it is always
the same men who live in the true or in the
false ; more at their ease in the latter than in

the former.

199

Truth is at variance with our natures, but
not so error; and for a very simple reason.
Truth requires us to recognise ourselves as
limited, but error flatters us with the belief that
in one way or another we are subject to no

bounds at all.

200

That some men think they can still do what
they have been able to do, is natural enough ;
that others think they can do what they have
never been able to do, is singular, but not rare.

201

At all times it has not been the age, but
individuals alone, who have worked for know*

, 102 MAXIMS AMU' REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

ledge. It was the age which put Socrates to
death by poison, the age which burnt Huss.
The ages have always remained alike.

202

That is true Symbolism, where the more
particular represents the more general, not as
a dream or shade, but as a vivid, instantaneous
revelation of the Inscrutable.

203

Everything of an abstract or symbolic nature,
as soon as it is challenged by realities, ends by
consuming them and itself. So credit consumes
both money and itself.

204
Mastery often passes for egoism.

205

With Protestants, as soon as good works
cease and their merit is denied, sentimentality
takes their place.

206

If a man knows where to get good advice, it
is as though he could supply it himself.

LIFE AND CHARACTER 103

207

The use of mottoes is to indicate something
we have not attained, but strive to attain. It
is right to keep them always before our eyes.

208

* If a man cannot lift a stone himself, let him
leave it, even though he has some one to help
him.'

209

Despotism promotes general self-government,
because from top to bottom it makes the indi-
vidual responsible, and so produces the highest
degree of activity.

210

A man must pay dear for his errors if he
wishes to get rid of them, and even then he is
lucky.

211

Enthusiasm is of the greatest value, so long
as we are not carried away by it.

212

School itself is the only true preparation
for it.

104 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

213

Error is related to truth as sleep to waking.
I have observed that on awakening from error
a man turns again to truth as with new vigour.

214

Every one suffers who does not work for
himself. A man works for others to have
them share in his joy.

215

Men's prejudices rest upon their character
for the time being and cannot be overcome, as
being part and parcel of themselves. Neither
evidence nor common-sense nor reason has the
slightest influence upon them.

216

Characters often make a law of their failings.
Men who know the world have said that when
prudence is only fear in disguise, its scruples
cannot be conquered. The weak often have
revolutionary sentiments ; they think they
would be well off if they were not ruled, and
fail to perceive that they can rule neither
themselves nor others.

LIFE AND CHARACTER 105

217

Common-sense is born pure in the healthy
man, is self-developed, and is revealed by a
resolute perception and recognition of what
is necessary and useful. Practical men and
women avail themselves of it with confidence.
Where it is absent, both sexes find anything
necessary when they desire it, and useful when
it gives them pleasure.

218

All men, as they attain freedom, give play to
their errors. The strong do too much, and the

weak too little.

219

The conflict of the old, the existing, the
continuing, with development, improvement,
and reform, is always the same. Order of every
kind turns at last to pedantry, and to get rid
of the one, people destroy the other; and so
it goes on for a while, until people perceive
that order must be established anew. Classicism
and Romanticism; close corporations and free-
dom of trade ; the maintenance of large estates
and the division of the land, — it is always the
same conflict which ends by producing a new

106 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

one. The best policy of those in power would
be so to moderate this conflict as to let it right
itself without the destruction of either element.
But this has not been granted to men, and it
seems not to be the will of God.

220

A great work limits us for the moment,
because we feel it above our powers ; and only
in so far as we afterwards incorporate it with
our culture, and make it part of our mind and
heart, does it become a dear and worthy object.

221

It is no wonder that we all more or less
delight in the mediocre, because it leaves us
in peace: it gives us the comfortable feeling
of intercourse with what is like ourselves.

222

There is no use in reproving vulgarity, for

it never changes.

223

We cannot escape a contradiction in our-
selves; we must try to resolve it. If the
contradiction comes from others, it does not
affect us: it is their affair.

LIFE AND CHARACTER 107

224

There are many things in the world that are
at once good and excellent, but they do not
come into contact.

225

Which is the best government ? That which
teaches us to govern ourselves.

226

When men have to do with women, they
get spun off like a distaff.

227

It may well be that a man is at times horribly
threshed by misfortunes, public and private:
but the reckless flail of Fate, when it beats the
rich sheaves, crushes only the straw; and the
corn feels nothing of it and dances merrily on
the floor, careless whether its way is to the mill
or the furrow.

228

However probable it is that a desire may be
fulfilled, there is alwaj^s a doubt ; and so when
the desire is realised, it is always surprising.

108 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

229

Absurdities presented with good taste rouse
disgust and admiration.

230

Of the best society it used to be said : their
speech instructs the mind, and their silence the
feelings.

231

Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in
action.

232

Beauty and Genius must be kept afar if one
would avoid becoming their slave.

233

We treat the aged with consideration, as we
treat children.

234

An old man loses one of the greatest of human
privileges : he is no more judged by his peers.

235

In the matter of knowledge, it has happened
to me as to one who rises early, and in the dark

LIFE AND CHARACTER 109

impatiently awaits the dawn, and then the sun ;
but is blinded when it appears.

236

Great primeval powers, evolved in time or in
eternity, work on unceasingly : whether to weal
or to woe, is a matter of chance.

110 MAXIMS AND EEFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

IV

237

People often say to themselves in life that
they should avoid a variety of occupation, and,
more particularly, be the less willing to enter
upon new work the older they grow. But it
is easy to talk, easy to give advice to oneself
and others. To grow old is itself to enter upon
a new business ; all the circumstances change,
and a man must either cease acting altogether,
or willingly and consciously take over the
new r81e.

238

Of the Absolute in the theoretical sense, I
do not venture to speak ; but this I maintain :
that if a man recognises it in its manifestation,
and always keeps his gaze fixed upon it, he will
experience very great reward.

239

To live in a great idea means to treat the
impossible as though it were possible. It is

LIFE AND CHARACTER 111

just the same with a strong character; and
when an idea and a character meet, things arise
which fill the world with wonder for thousands
of years.

240

Napoleon lived wholly in a great idea, but he
was unable to take conscious hold of it. After
utterly disavowing all ideals and denying them
any reality, he zealously strove to realise them.
His clear, incorruptible intellect could not,
however, tolerate such a perpetual conflict
within ; and there is much value in the thoughts
which he was compelled, as it were, to utter,
and which are expressed very peculiarly and
with much charm.

241

He considered the idea as a thing of the
mind, that had, it is true, no reality, but
still, on passing away, left a residuum — a
caput mortuum — to which some reality could
not be altogether refused. We may think this
a very perverse and material notion ; but when
he entertained his friends with the never-
ending consequences of his life and actions,
in full belief and confidence in them, he

112 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

expressed himself quite differently. Then,
indeed, he was ready to admit that life
produces life ; that a fruitful act has effects
to all time. He took pleasure in confessing
that he had given a great impulse, a new
direction, to the course of the world's affairs.

242

It always remains a very remarkable fact that
men whose whole personality is almost all idea,
are so extremely shy of all phantasy. In this
case was Hamann, who could not bear the
mention of "things of another world." He
took occasion to express himself on this point
in a certain paragraph, which he wrote in four-
teen different ways; and still, apparently, he
was never quite satisfied with it.

Two of these attempts have been preserved
to us; a third we have ourselves attempted,
which we are induced to print here by the pre-
ceding observations.

243

Man is placed as a real being in the midst
of a real world, and endowed with such organs

LIFE AND CHARACTER 113

that he can perceive and produce the real and
also the possible.

All healthy men have the conviction of their
own existence and of an existence around them.
However, even the brain contains a hollow spot,
that is to say, a place in which no object is
mirrored; just as in the eye itself there is a
little spot that does not see. If a man pays
particular attention to this spot and is absorbed
in it, he falls into a state of mental sickness,
has presentiments of " things of another world,"
which are, in reality, no things at all ; possess-
ing neither form nor limit, but alarming him
like dark, empty tracts of night, and pursuing
him as something more than phantoms, if he
does not tear himself free from them.

244

To the several perversities of the day a man
should always oppose only the great masses
of universal history.

245

No one can live much with children without
finding that they always react to any outward
influence upon them.

114 MAXIMS AND KEFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

246

With any specially childish, nature the
reaction is even passionate, while its action is
energetic.

247

That is why children's lives are a series of
refined judgments, not to say prejudices; and
to efface a rapid but partial perception in order
to make way for a more general one, time is
necessary. To bear this in mind is one of the
teacher's greatest duties.

248

Friendship can only be bred in practice and
be maintained by practice. Affection, nay, love
itself, is no help at all to friendship. True,
active, productive friendship consists in keep-
ing equal pace in life : in my friend approving
my aims, while I approve his, and in thus
moving forwards together steadfastly, however
much our way of thought and life may vary.

LITE AND CHARACTER 115

249

In the world people take a man at his own
estimate; but he must estimate himself at
something. Disagreeableness is more easily
tolerated than insignificance.

250

You can force anything on society so long as
it has no sequel.

251

We do not learn to know men if they come
to us; we must go to them to find out what

they are.

252

That we have many criticisms to make on
those who visit us, and that, as soon as they
depart, we pass no very amiable judgment upon
them, seems to me almost natural; for we have,
so to speak, a right to measure them by our
own standard. Even intelligent and fair-minded
men hardly refrain from sharp censure on such
occasions.

116 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

253

But if, on the contrary, we have been in their
homes, and have seen them in their surround-
ings and habits and the circumstances which
are necessary and inevitable for them; if we
have seen the kind of influence they exert on
those around them, or how they behave, it is
only ignorance and ill-will that can find food
for ridicule in what must appear to us in more
than one sense worthy of respect.

254

What we call conduct and good manners
obtains for us that which otherwise is to be
obtained only by force, or not even by force.

255
Women's society is the element of good

manners.

256

How can the character, the peculiar nature of
a man, be compatible with good manners ?

257

It is through his good manners that a man's
peculiar nature should be made all the more

LIFE AND CHARACTER 117

conspicuous. Every one likes distinction, but it
should not be disagreeable.

258

The most privileged position, in life as in
society, is that of an educated soldier. Rough
warriors, at any rate, remain true to their
character, and as great strength is usually the
cover for good nature, we get on with them
at need.

259

No one is more troublesome than an awkward
civilian. As his business is not with anything
brutal or coarse, he might be expected to show
delicacy of feeling.

260

When we live with people who have a
delicate sense of what is fitting, we get
quite anxious about them if anything happens
to disturb this sense.

261

No one would come into a room with
spectacles on his nose, if he knew that women
at once lose any inclination to look at or talk
to him.

118 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

262

A familiar in the place of a respectful
demeanour is always ridiculous.

263

There is no outward sign of politeness that
will be found to lack some deep moral founda-
tion. The right kind of education would be that
which conveyed the sign and the foundation at
the same time.

264

A man's manners are the mirror in which he
shows his portrait.

265

There is a politeness of the heart, and it is
allied to love. It produces the most agreeable
politeness of outward demeanour.

266

Voluntary dependence is- the best state, and
how should that be possible without love ?

267

We are never further from our wishes than
when we fancy we possess the object of them.

LIFE AND CHARACTER 119

268

No one is more of a slave than he who thinks
himself free without being so.

269

A man has only to declare himself free to feel
at the same moment that he is limited. Should
he venture to declare himself limited, he feels
himself free.

270

Against the great superiority of another there
is no remedy but love.

271

It is a terrible thing for an eminent man to
be gloried in by fools.

272

It is said that no man is a hero to his valet.
That is only because a hero can be recognised
only by a hero. The valet will probably know
how to appreciate his like, — his fellow-valet.

273

There is no greater consolation for mediocrity
than that the genius is not immortal.

120 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETJiE

274

The greatest men are linked to their age
by some weak point.

275.

We generally take men to be more dangerous
than they are.

276

Fools and wise folk are alike harmless. It
is the half-wise, and the half-foolish, who are
the most dangerous.

277

To see a difficult thing lightly handled gives
us the impression of the impossible.

278

Difficulties increase the nearer we come to

our aim.

279

Sowing is not so painful as reaping.

280

We are fond of looking to the future, because
our secret wishes make us apt to turn in our
favour the uncertainties which move about in
it hither and thither.

,LIFE AND CHARACTER 121

281

It is not easy to be in any great assembly
without thinking that the chance which brings
so many people together will also make us

meet our friends.

282

A man may live never so retired a life but
he becomes a debtor or a creditor before he is

aware of it.

283

If anyone meets us who owes us a debt
of gratitude, it immediately crosses our mind.
How often can we meet some one to whom we
owe gratitude, without thinking of it !

284

To communicate oneself is Nature ; to receive
a communication as it is given is Culture.

285

No one would speak much in society if he
were aware how often we misunderstand others.

286

It is only because we have not understood a
thing that we cannot repeat it without alteration.

122 MAXIMS AND KEFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

287

To make a long speech in the presence of
others without flattering your audience, is to
rouse dislike.

288

Every word that we utter rouses its contrary.

289

Contradiction and flattery make, both of
them, bad conversation.

290

The pleasantest society is that in which there
exists a genial deference amongst the members
one towards another.

291

By nothing do men show their character
more than by the things they laugh at.

292

The ridiculous springs from a moral contrast
innocently presented to the senses.

293
The sensual man often laughs when there is

LIFE AND CHARACTER 123

nothing to laugh at. Whatever it is that moves
him, he shows that he is pleased with himself.

294

An intelligent man finds almost everything
ridiculous, a wise man hardly anything.

295

A man well on in years was reproved for still
troubling himself about young women. 'It is
the only means,' he replied,' ' of regaining one's
youth ; and that is something every one wishes

to do.'

296

A man does not mind being blamed for his
faults, and being punished for them, and he
patiently suffers much for the sake of them;
but he becomes impatient if he is required to

give them up.

297

Certain faults are necessary to the individual
if he is to exist. We should not like old friends
to give up certain peculiarities.

298

It is said of a man that he will soon die, when
he acts in any way unlike himself.

124 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

299

What kind of faults in ourselves should we
retain, nay, even cultivate ? Those which
rather flatter other people than offend them.

300
The passions are good or bad qualities, only

intensified.

301

Our passions are, in truth, like the phoenix.
When the old one burns away, the new one
rises out of its ashes at once.

302

Great passions are hopeless diseases. That
which could cure them is the first thing to make
them really dangerous.

303

Passion is enhanced and tempered by avowal.
In nothing, perhaps, is the middle course more
desirable than in confidence and reticence
towards those we love.

3°4

To sit in judgment on the departed is never
likely to be equitable. We all suffer from life;

LIFE AND CHARACTER 125

who except God can call us to account ? Let
not their faults and sufferings, but what
they have accomplished and done, occupy the
survivors.

305

It is failings that show human nature, and
merits that distinguish the individual; faults
and misfortunes we all have in common ; virtues
belong to each one separately.

126 MAXIMS AND KEFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

VI

306

The secret places in the way of life may not
and cannot be revealed: there are rocks of
offence on which every traveller must stumble.
But the poet points to where they are.

307

It would not be worth while to see seventy
years if all the wisdom of this world were
foolishness with God.

308

The true is Godlike : we do not see it itself ;
we must guess at it through its manifestations.

309

The real scholar learns how to evolve the
unknown from the known, and draws near the
master.

310

In the smithy the iron is softened by blowing
up the fire, and taking the dross from the bar.

LIFE AND CHARACTER 127

As soon as it is purified, it is beaten and pressed,
and becomes firm again by the addition of fresh
water. The same thing happens to a man at
the hands of his teacher.

3"

What belongs to a man, he cannot get rid of,
even though he throws it away.

312

Of true religions there are only two : one of
them recognises and worships the Holy that
without form or shape dwells in and around
us; and the other recognises and worships it
in its fairest form. Everything that lies
between these two is idolatry.

It is undeniable that in the Reformation
the human mind tried to free itself; and the
renaissance of Greek and Roman antiquity
brought about the wish and longing for a freer,
more seemly, and elegant life. The movement
was favoured in no small degree by the fact that
men's hearts aimed at returning to a certain

128 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

simple state of nature, while the imagination
sought to concentrate itself.

The Saints were all at once driven from
heaven; and senses, thought, and heart were
turned from a divine mother with a tender
child, to the grown man doing good and suffer-
ing evil, who was later transfigured into a being
half-divine in its nature, and then recognised
and honoured as God himself. He stood
against a background where the Creator had
opened out the universe ; a spiritual influence
went out from him ; his sufferings were adopted
as an example, and his transfiguration was the
pledge of everlastingness.

As a coal is revived by incense, so prayer
revives the hopes of the heart.

316

From a strict point of view we must have a
reformation of ourselves every day, and protest
against others, even though it be in no religious
sense.

LIFE AND CHARACTER 129

31?

It should be our earnest endeavour to use
words coinciding as closely as possible with
what we feel, see, think, experience, imagine,
and reason. It is an endeavour which we
cannot evade, and which is daily to be renewed.

Let every man examine himself, and he will
find this a much harder task than he might
suppose; for, unhappily, a man usually takes
words as mere make-shifts ; his knowledge and
his thought are in most cases better than his
method of expression.

False, irrelevant, and futile ideas may arise
in ourselves and others, or find their way into
us from without. Let us persist in the effort
to remove them as far as we can, by plain and
honest purpose.

318

As we grow older, the ordeals grow greater.

3*9
Where I cannot be moral, my power is gone.

320

A man is not deceived by others, he deceives
himself.

130 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

321

Laws are all made by old people and by men.
Youths and women want the exceptions, old
people the rules.

322

It is not the intelligent man who rules, but
intelligence ; not the wise man, but wisdom.

323
To praise a man is to put oneself on his level.

324

It is not enough to know, we must also apply;
it is not enough to will, we must also do.

325

Chinese, Indian, and Egyptian antiquities
are never more than curiosities; it is well to
make acquaintance with them ; but in point
of moral and aesthetic culture they can help us
little.

326

The German runs no greater danger than
to advance with and by the example of his
neighbours. There is perhaps no nation that

LIFE AND CHARACTER 131

Is fitter for the process of self-development ; so
that it has proved of the greatest advantage
to Germany to have obtained the notice of the
world so late.

327

Even men of insight do not see that they try-
to explain things which lie at the foundation
of our experience, and in which we must simply
acquiesce.

Yet still the attempt may have its advantage,
as otherwise we should break off our researches
too soon.

328

From this time forward, if a man does not
apply himself to some art or handiwork, he will
be in a bad way. In the rapid changes of the
world, knowledge is no longer a furtherance ;
by the time a man has taken note of everything,
he has lost himself.

329

Besides, in these days the world forces
universal culture upon us, and so we need
not trouble ourselves further about it ; we must
appropriate some particular culture.

132 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE
330

The greatest difficulties lie where we do not
look for them.

33i

Our interest in public events is mostly the
merest philistinism.

332

Nothing is more highly to be prized than the
value of each day.

333

Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt! This
is so strange an utterance, that it could only
have come from one who fancied himself autoch-
thonous. The man who looks upon it as an
honour to be descended from wise ancestors,
will allow them at least as much common-sense
as he allows himself.

334

Strictly speaking, everything depends upon a
man's intentions ; where these exist, thoughts
appear; and as the intentions are, so are the
thoughts.

335

If a man lives long in a high position, he
does not, it is true, experience all that a man
can experience; but he experiences things like
them, and perhaps some tilings that have -no
parallel elsewhere.

LIFE AND CHARACTER 133

VII

336

The first and last thing that is required of
genius is love of truth.

337

To be and remain true to oneself and others,
is to possess the noblest attribute of the greatest
talents.

333
Great talents are the best means of conciliation.

339

The action of genius is in a way ubiquitous :
towards general truths before experience, and
towards particular truths after it.

340

An active scepticism is one which constantly
aims at overcoming itself, and arriving by means
of regulated experience at a kind of conditioned
certainty.

134 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OE GOETHE

341

The general nature of the sceptical mind is
its tendency to inquire whether any particular
predicate really attaches to any particular
object ; and the purpose of the inquiry is safely
to apply in practice what has thus been discovered
and proved.

342

The mind endowed with active powers and
keeping with a practical object to the task that
lies nearest, is the worthiest there is on earth.

343

Perfection is the measure of heaven, and the
wish to be perfect the measure of man.

344

Not only what is born with him, but also
what he acquires, makes the man.

345

A man is well equipped for all the real neces-
sities of life if he trusts his senses, and so
cultivates them that they remain worthy of
being trusted.

LIFE AND CHARACTER 135

346

The senses do not deceive ; it is the judgment
that deceives.

347

The lower animal is taught by its organs ;
man teaches his organs, and dominates them.

348

All direct invitation to live up to ideals is
of doubtful value, particularly if addressed to
women. Whatever the reason of it may be,
a man of any importance collects round him
a seraglio of a more or less religious, moral, and
aesthetic character.

349

When a great idea enters the world as a
Gospel, it becomes an offence to the multitude,
which stagnates in pedantry; and to those who
have much learning but little depth, it is folly.

35°

Every idea appears at first as a strange
visitor, and when it begins to be realised, it
is hardly distinguishable from phantasy and
phantastery.

136 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

351

This it is that has been called, in a good and
in a bad sense, ideology ; and this is why the
ideologist is so repugnant to the hard-working,
practical man of every day.

352

You may recognise the utility of an idea,
and yet not quite understand how to make
a perfect use of it.

353

Credo Deum ! That is a fine, a worthy thing
to say; but to recognise God where and as
he reveals himself, is the only true bliss on
earth.

354

Kepler said: 4My wish is that I may per-
ceive the God whom I find everywhere in the
external world, in like manner also within and
inside me.' The good man was not aware that
in that very moment the divine in him stood
in the closest connection with the divine in the
Universe.

355

What is predestination? It is this: God
is mightier and wiser than we are, and so he
does with us as he pleases.

LIFE AND CHARACTER 137

356

Toleration should, strictly speaking, be only
a passing mood ; it ought to lead to acknowledg-
ment and appreciation. To tolerate a person
is to affront him.

357

Faith, Love, and Hope once felt, in a quiet
sociable hour, a plastic impulse in their nature ;
they worked together and created a lovely
image, a Pandora in the higher sense, Patience.

358

4 1 stumbled over the roots of the tree which
I planted.' It must have been an old forester
who said that.

359

A leaf blown by the wind often looks like
a bird.

360

Does the sparrow know how the stork feels ?

361

Lamps make oil-spots, and candles want
snuffing; it is only the light of heaven that
shines pure and leaves no stain.

138 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

362

If you miss the first button-hole, you will
not succeed in buttoning up your coat.

363

A burnt child dreads the fire ; an old man
who has often been singed is afraid of warming

himself.

364

It is not worth while to do anything for the
world that we have with us, as the existing order
may in a moment pass away. It is for the past
and the future that we must work : for the past,
to acknowledge its merits ; for the future, to
try to increase its value.

365

Let every man ask himself with which of his
faculties he can and will somehow influence

his age.

366

Let no one think that people have waited for
him as for the Saviour.

367

Character in matters great and small consists
in a man steadily pursuing the things of which
he feels himself capable.

LIFE AND CHARACTER 139

368

The man who wants to be active and has to
be so, need only think of what is fitting at the
moment, and he will make his way without
difficulty. This is where women have the
advantage, if they understand it.

369

The moment is a kind of public ; a man
must deceive it into believing that he is doing
something; then it leaves us alone to go our
way in secret ; whereat its grandchildren cannot
fail to be astonished.

There are men who put their knowledge in
the place of insight.

37i

In some states, as a consequence of the violent
movements experienced in almost all directions,
there has come about a certain overpressure
in the system of education, the harm of which
will be more generally felt hereafter ; though
even now it is perfectly well recognised by
capable and honest authorities. Capable men
live in a sort of despair over the fact that

140 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

they are bound by the rules of their office to
teach and communicate things which they look
upon as useless and hurtful.

372

There is no sadder sight than the direct striv-
ing after the unconditioned in this thoroughly
conditioned world.

373

Before the Revolution it was all effort ; after-
wards it all changed to demand.

374

Can a nation become ripe ? That is a strange
question. I would answer, Yes ! if all the men
could be born thirty years of age. But as youth
will always be too forward and old age too
backward, the really mature man is always
hemmed in between them, and has to resort to
strange devices to make his way through.

375

It does not look well for monarchs to speak
through the press, for power should act and not
talk. The projects of the liberal party always
bear being read : the man who is overpowered

LIFE AND CHARACTER 141

may at least express his views in speech, because
he cannot act. When Mazarin was shown some
satirical songs on a new tax, * Let them sing,'
said he, ' as long as they pay.'

376

Vanity is a desire of personal glory, the wish
to be appreciated, honoured, and run after, not
because of one's personal qualities, merits, and
achievements, but because of one's individual
existence. At best, therefore, it is a frivolous
beauty whom it befits.

377

The most important matters of feeling as of
reason, of experience as of reflection, should be
treated of only by word of mouth. The spoken
word at once dies if it is not kept alive by some
other word following on it and suited to the
hearer. Observe what happens in social con-
verse. If the word is not dead when it reaches
the hearer, he murders it at once by a contra-
diction, a stipulation, a condition, a digression,
an interruption, and all the thousand tricks of
conversation. With the written word the case
is still worse. No one cares to read anything

142 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

to which he is not already to some extent
accustomed : he demands the known and the
familiar under an altered form. Still the
written word has this advantage, that it lasts
and can await the time when it is allowed to
take effect.

378

Both what is reasonable and what is unrea-
sonable have to undergo the like contradiction.

379

Dialectic is the culture of the spirit of contra-
diction, which is given to man that he may learn
to perceive the differences between things.

380

With those who are really of like disposition
with himself a man cannot long be at variance ;
he will always come to an agreement again.
With those who are really of adverse disposi-
tion, he may in vain try to preserve harmony;
he will always come to a separation again.

381

Opponents fancy they refute us when they
repeat their own opinion and pay no attention
to ours.

LIFE AND CHARACTER 143

382

People who contradict and dispute should
now and then remember that not every mode
of speech is intelligible to every one.

383
Every man hears only what he understands.

384

I am quite prepared to find that many a
reader will disagree with me ; but when he has
a thing before him in black and white, he must
let it stand. Another reader may perhaps take
up the very same copy and agree with me.

385
The truest liberality is appreciation.

386

For the strenuous man the difficulty is to
recognise the merits of elder contemporaries
and not let himself be hindered by their
defects.

387

Some men think about the defects of their
friends, and there is nothing to be gained by it.

144 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

I have always paid attention to the merits of
my enemies, and found it an advantage.

388

There are many men who fancy they under-
stand whatever they experience.

389

The public must be treated like women : they
must be told absolutely nothing but what they
like to hear.

390

Every age of man has a certain philosophy
answering to it. The child comes out as a
realist : he finds himself as convinced that pears
and apples exist as that he himself exists. The
youth in a storm of inner passion is forced to
turn his gaze within, and feel in advance what
he is going to be : he is changed into an ideal-
ist. But the man has every reason to become a
sceptic: he does well to doubt whether the
means he has chosen to his end are the right
ones. Before and during action he has every
reason for keeping his understanding mobile,
that he may not afterwards have to grieve over
a false choice. Yet when he grows old he will

LIFE AND CHARACTER 145

always confess himself a mystic : he sees that so
much seems to depend on chance; that folly
succeeds and wisdom fails ; that good and evil
fortune are brought unexpectedly to the same
level; so it is and so it has been, and old age
acquiesces in that which is and was and will be.

When a man grows old he must consciously
remain at a certain stage.

392

It does not become an old man to run after
the fashion, either in thought or in dress. But
he must know where he is, and what the others
are aiming at.

What is called fashion is the tradition of the
moment. All tradition carries with it a certain
necessity for people to put themselves on a
level with it.

393

We have long been busy with the critique of
reason. I should like to see a critique of
common-sense. It would be a real benefit to
mankind if we could convincingly prove to the

146 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

ordinary intelligence how far it can go; and
that is just as much as it fully requires for life
on this earth.

394

The thinker makes a great mistake when he
asks after cause and effect : they both together
make up the indivisible phenomenon.

395

All practical men try to bring the world un-
der their hands ; all thinkers, under their heads.
How far each succeeds, they may both see for
themselves.

396

Shall we say that a man thinks only when he
cannot think out that of which he is thinking ?

397

What is invention or discovery? It is the
conclusion of what we were looking for.

398

It is with history as with nature and with
everything of any depth, it may be past, present,
or future: the further we seriously pursue it,
the more difficult are the problems that appear.

LIFE AND CHARACTER 147

The man who is not afraid of them, but attacks
them bravely, has a feeling of higher culture
and greater ease the further he progresses.

399

Every phenomenon is within our reach if we
treat it as an inclined plane, which is of easy
ascent, though the thick end of the wedge may
be steep and inaccessible.

400

If a man would enter upon some course of
knowledge, he must either be deceived or deceive
himself, unless external necessity irresistibly
determines him. Who would become a physician
if, at one and the same time, he saw before him
all the horrible sights that await him ?

401

How many years must a man do nothing
before he can at all know what is to be done
and how to do it !

402

Duty : where a man loves what he commands
himself to do.

LITERATURE AND ART

LITERATURE AND ART

403

WHEN Madame Roland was on the scaffold,
she asked for pen and paper, to note the peculiar
thoughts that hovered about her on the last
journey. It is a pity they were refused, for in
a tranquil mind thoughts rise up at the close of
life hitherto unthinkable; like blessed inward
voices, alighting in glory on the summits of the

past.

404

Literature is a fragment of fragments: the
least of what happened and was spoken, has
been written ; and of the things that have been
written, very few have been preserved.

405

And yet, with all the fragmentary nature
of literature, we find thousand-fold repetition ;
which shows how limited is man's mind and
destiny.

152 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

406

Excellent work is unfathomable, approach it
as you will.

407

It is not language in itself which is correct or
forcible or elegant, but the mind that is embodied
in it; and so it is not for a man to determine
whether he will give his calculations or speeches
or poems the desired qualities : the question is
whether Nature has given him the intellectual
and moral qualities which fit him for the work,
— the intellectual power of observation and in-
sight, the moral power of repelling the evil spirits
that might hinder him from paying respect to
truth.

408

The appeal to posterity springs from the pure,
strong feeling of the existence of something im-
perishable; something that, even though it be
not at once recognised, will in the end be grati-
fied by finding the minority turn into a majority.

409

When a new literature succeeds, it obscures
the effect of an earlier one, and its own effect

LITERATURE AND ART 153

predominates; so that it is well, from time to
time, to look back. What is original in us is
best preserved and quickened if we do not lose
sight of those who have gone before us.

410

The most original authors of modern times
are so, not because they produce what is new,
but only because they are able to say things
the like of which seem never to have been said
before.

4»

Thus the best sign of originality lies in
taking up a subject and then developing it so
fully as to make every one confess that he
would hardly have found so much in it.

412

There are many thoughts that come only from
general culture, like buds from green branches.
When roses bloom, you see them blooming every-
where.

413

* Lucidity is a due distribution of light and
shade.' ffamann.

154 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

414

A man who has no acquaintance with foreign
languages knows nothing of his own.

We must remember that there are many men
who, without being productive, are anxious to
I/ say something important, and the results are
most curious.

416

Deep and earnest thinkers are in a difficult
position with regard to the public.

Some books seem to have been written, not
to teach us anything, but to let us know that
the author has known something.

418

An author can show no greater respect for
his public than by never bringing it what it
expects, but what he himself thinks right and
proper in that stage of his own and others' cul-
ture in which for the time he finds himself.

LITERATURE AND ART 155

419

The so-called Nature-poets are men of active
talent, with a fresh stimulus and reaction from
an over-cultured, stagnant, mannered epoch of
art. They cannot avoid commonplace.

420

Productions are now possible which, without
being bad, have no value. They have no value,
because they contain nothing; and they are not
bad, because a general form of good- workman-
ship is present to the author's mind.

421

All lyrical work must, as a whole, be per-
fectly intelligible, but in some particulars a
little unintelligible.

422

A romance is a subjective epic in which the
author begs leave to treat the world after his
own ideas. The only question is, whether he
has any ideas ; the rest will follow of itself.

423

Subjective or so-called sentimental poetry
has now been admitted to an equality with

156 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OP GOETHE

objective and descriptive. This was inevitable;
because otherwise the whole of modern poetry
would have to be discarded. It is now obvious
that when men of truly poetical genius appear,
they will describe more of the particular feel-
ings of the inner life than of the general facts
of the great life of the world. This has already
taken place to such a degree that we have a
poetry without figures of speech, which can by
no means be refused all praise.

424

Superstition is the poetry of life, and so it
does not hurt the poet to be superstitious.

425

That glorious hymn, Veni Creator Spiritus,
is really an appeal to genius. That is why it
speaks so powerfully to men of intellect and
power.

426

Translators are like busy match-makers : they
sing the praises of some half- veiled beauty, and
extol her charms, and arouse an irresistible
longing for the original.

LITEKATURE AND ART 157

427
A Spinoza in poetry becomes a Machiavelli in

philosophy.

428

Against the three unities there is nothing to
be said, if the subject is very simple ; but there
are times when thrice three unities, skilfully
interwoven, produce a very pleasant effect.

429

The sentimentality of the English is humor-
ous and tender; of the French, popular and
pathetic ; of the Germans, na'ive and realistic.

430

Mysticism is the scholastic of the heart, the
dialectic of the feelings.

If a man sets out to reproach an author with
obscurity, he should first of all examine his own
mind, to see if he is himself all clearness within.
Twilight makes even plain writing illegible.

432

It is with books as with new acquaintances.
At first we are highly delighted, if we find a

158 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

general agreement, — if we are pleasantly moved
on any of the chief sides of our existence. With
a closer acquaintance differences come to light;
and then reasonable conduct mainly consists in
not shrinking back at once, as may happen in
youth, but in keeping firm hold of the things
in which we agree, and being quite clear about
the things in which we differ, without on that
account desiring any union.

433

In psychological reflection the greatest diffi-
culty is this : that inner and outer must always
be viewed in parallel lines, or, rather, inter-
woven. It is a continual systole and diastole,
an inspiration and an expiration of the living
soul. If this cannot be put into words, it should
be carefully marked and noted.

434

My relations with Schiller rested on the
decided tendency of both of us towards a single
aim, and our common activity rested on the
diversity of the means by which we endeavoured
to attain that aim.

LITERATURE AND ART 159

435

Once when a slight difference was mentioned
between us, of which I was reminded by a
passage in a letter of his, I made the following
reflections : There is a great difference between
a poet seeking the particular for the universal,
and seeing the universal in the particular. The
one gives rise to Allegory, where the particular
serves only as instance or example of the gen-
eral ; but the other is the true nature of Poetry,
namely, the expression of the particular without
any thought of, or reference to, the general.
If a man grasps the particular vividly, he also
grasps the general, without being aware of it at
the time ; or he may make the discovery long
afterwards.

436

There may be eclectic philosophers, but not
an eclectic philosophy.

437

But every one is an eclectic who, out of the
things that surround and take place about him,
appropriates what is suited to his nature ; and
this is what is meant by culture and progress,
in matters of theory or practice.

160 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

438

Various maxims of the ancients, which we are
wont to repeat again and again, had a meaning
quite different from that which is apt to attach
to them in later times.

439

The saying that no one who is unacquainted
with or a stranger to geometry should enter the
philosopher's school, does not mean that a man
must become a mathematician to attain the
wisdom of the world.

440

Geometry is here taken in its primary
elements, such as are contained in Euclid and
laid before every beginner ; and then it is the
most perfect propaedeutic and introduction to
philosophy.

441

When a boy begins to understand that an
invisible point must always come before a visible
one, and that the shortest way between two
points is a straight line, before he can draw it
on his paper with a pencil, he experiences a cer-
tain pride and pleasure. And he is not wrong ;

LITERATURE AND AKT 161

for he has the source of all thought opened to
him ; idea and reality, potentia et actu, are
become clear; the philosopher has no new dis-
covery to bring him ; as a mathematician, he
has found the basis of all thought for himself.

442

And if we turn to that significant utterance,
Know thyself, we must not explain it in an
ascetic sense. It is in nowise the self-know-
ledge of our modern hypochondrists, humorists,
and self-tormentors. It simply means : pay
some attention to yourself ; take note of your-
self ; so that you may know how you come to
stand towards those like you and towards the
world. This involves no psychological torture ;
every capable man knows and feels what it
means. It is a piece of good advice which
every one will find of the greatest advantage in
practice.

443

Let us remember how great the ancients
were ; and especially how the Socratic school
holds up to us the source and standard of all
life and action, and bids us not indulge in empty
speculation, but live and do.

162 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

444

So long as our scholastic education takes us
back to antiquity and furthers the study of the
Greek and Latin languages, we may congratu-
late ourselves that these studies, so necessary
for the higher culture, will never disappear.

445

If we set our gaze on antiquity and earnestly
study it, in the desire to form ourselves thereon,
we get the feeling as if it were only then that
we really became men.

446

The pedagogue, in trying to write and speak
Latin, has a higher and grander idea of himself
than would be permissible in ordinary life.

447

In the presence of antiquity, the mind that is
susceptible to poetry and art feels itself placed
in the most pleasing ideal state of nature ; and
even to this day the Homeric hymns have the
power of freeing us, at any rate, for moments,
from the frightful burden which the tradition
of several thousand years has rolled upon us.

LITERATURE AND ART 163

448

There is no such thing^as patrioticjart and
patriotic science._ Both art and science belong,
Tike all things great and good, to the whole
world, and can be furthered only by a free
and general interchange of ideas among con-
temporaries, with continual reference to the
heritage of the past as it is known to us.

449

Poetical talent is given to peasant as well as
to knight ; all that is required is that each shall
grasp his position and treat it worthily.

45°

An historic sense means a sense so cultured
that, in valuing the deserts and merits of its
own time, it takes account also of the past.

451

The best that history gives us is the enthusi-
asm it arouses.

452

The historian's duty is twofold : first towards
himself, then towards his readers. As regards
himself, he must carefully examine into the

164 MAXIMS AND KEFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

things that could have happened; and, for the
reader's sake, he must determine what actually
did happen. His action towards himself is a
matter between himself and his colleagues ; but
the public must not see into the secret that
there is little in history which can be said to be
positively determined.

453

The historian's duty is to separate the true
from the false, the certain from the uncertain,
and the doubtful from that which cannot be
accepted.

454

It is seldom that any one of great age
becomes historical to himself, and finds his
contemporaries become historical to him, so
that he neither cares nor is able to argue with
any one.

455

On a closer examination of the matter, it will
be found that the historian does not easily grasp
history as something historical. In whatever
age he may live, the historian always writes as
though he himself had been present at the time

LITERATURE AND ART 165

of which, he treats, instead of simply narrating
the facts and movements of that time. Even
the mere chronicler only points more or less to
his own limitations, or the peculiarities of his
town or monastery or age.

456

We really learn only from those books which
we cannot criticise. The author of a book
which we could criticise would have to learn
from us.

457

That is the reason why the Bible will never
lose its power; because*, as long as the world
lasts, no one can stand up and say : I grasp it
as a whole and understand all the parts of it.
But we say humbly : as a whole it is worthy of
respect, and in all its parts it is applicable.

458

There is and will be much discussion as to
the use and harm of circulating the Bible. One
thing is clear to me: mischief will result, as
heretofore, by using it phantastically as a
system of dogma; benefit, as heretofore, by a
loving acceptance of its teachings.

166 MAXIMS AND KEFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

459

I am convinced that the Bible will always be
more beautiful the more it is understood; the
more, that is, we see and observe that every
word which we take in a general sense and
apply specially to ourselves, had, under certain
circumstances of time and place, a peculiar,
special, and directly individual reference.

460

The incurable evil of religious controversy is
that while one party wants to connect the
highest interest of humanity with fables and
phrases, the other tries to rest it on things that
satisfy no one.

461

If one has not read the newspapers for some
months and then reads them all together, one
sees, as one never saw before, how much time is
wasted with this kind of literature.

462

The classical is health; and the romantic,
disease.

LITERATURE AND ART 167

463

Ovid remained classical even in exile : it is
not in himself that he sees misfortune, but in
his banishment from the metropolis of the

world.

464

The romantic is already fallen into its own
abysm. It is hard to imagine anything more
degraded than the worst of the new productions.

465

Bodies which rot while they are still alive,
and are edified by the detailed contemplation of
their own decay ; dead men who remain in the
world for the ruin of others, and feed their
death on the living, — to this have come our
makers of literature.

When the same thing happened in antiquity,
it was only as a strange token of some rare dis-
ease ; but with the moderns the disease has
become endemic and epidemic.

466

Literature decays only as men become more
and more corrupt.

168 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE
467

What a day it is when we must envy the
men in their graves !

468

The things that are true, good, excellent, are
simple and always alike, whatever their appear-
ance may be. But the error that we blame is
extremely manifold and varying ; it is in con-
. flict not only with the good and the true, but
also with itself ; it is self-contradictory. Thus
it is that the words of blame in our literature
must necessarily outnumber the words of praise.

469

The Greeks, whose poetry and rhetoric was of
a simple and positive character, express approval
more often than disapproval. With the Latin
writers it is the contrary ; and the more poetry
and the arts of speech decay, the more will
blame swell and praise shrink.

470

4 What are tragedies but the versified passions
of people who make Heaven knows what out of
the external world ? '

LITERATURE AND ART 169

471

There are certain empirical enthusiasts who
are quite right in showing their enthusiasm
over new productions that are good; but they
are as ecstatic as if there were no other good
work in the world at all.

472

In Sakontala the poet appears in his highest
function. As the representative of the most
natural condition of things, the finest mode of
life, the purest moral endeavour, the worthiest
majesty, and the most solemn worship, he
ventures on common and ridiculous contrasts.

473

Shakespeare's Henry IV. If everything were
lost that has ever been preserved to us of this
kind of writing, the arts of poetry and rhetoric
could be completely restored out of this one
play.

474

Shakespeare's finest dramas are wanting here
and there in facility : they are something more
than they should be, and for that very reason
indicate the great poet.

170 MAXIMS AND KEFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

475

Shakespeare is dangerous reading for budding
talents : he compels them to reproduce him,
and they fancy they are producing themselves.

476

Yorick Sterne was the finest spirit that ever
worked. To read him is to attain a fine feeling
of freedom ; his humour is inimitable, and it is
not every kind of humour that frees the soul.

477

The peculiar value of so-called popular
ballads is that their motives are drawn direct
from nature. This, however, is an advantage
of which the poet of culture could also avail
himself, if he knew how to do it.

478

But in popular ballads there is always this
advantage, that in the art of saying things
shortly uneducated men are always better
skilled than those who are in the strict sense
of the word educated.

LITERATURE AND ART 171

479

Cremuth = Heart. The translator must pro-
ceed until he reaches the untranslatable ; and
then only will he have an idea of the foreign
nation and the foreign tongue.

480

When we say of a landscape that it has a
romantic character, it is the secret feeling of the
sublime taking the form of the past, or, what is
the same thing, of solitude, absence, or seclusion.

481

The Beautiful is a manifestation of secret
laws of nature, which, without its presence,
would never have been revealed.

482

It is said : Artist, study nature ! But it is no /
trifle to develop the noble out of the common- V
place, or beauty out of uniformity.

483

When Nature begins to reveal her open secret
to a man, he feels an irresistible longing for her
worthiest interpreter, Art.

172 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

484

For all other Arts we must make some allow-
ance ; but to Greek Art alone we are always
debtors.

485

There is no surer way of evading the world
than by Art ; and no surer way of uniting with
it than by Art.

486

Even in the moments of highest happiness
and deepest misery we need the Artist.

487

False tendencies of the senses are a kind of
desire after realism, always better than that
false tendency which expresses itself as ideal-
istic longing.

488

The dignity of Art appears perhaps most
conspicuously in Music ; for in Music there
is no material to be deducted. It is wholly
form and intrinsic value, and it raises and
ennobles all that it expresses.

LITERATURE AND ART 173

489

It is only by Art, and especially by Poetry,
that the imagination is regulated. Nothing is
more frightful than imagination without taste.

49°

If we were to despise Art on the ground that
it is an imitation of Nature, it might be
answered that Nature also imitates much else ;
further, that Art does not exactly imitate that
which can be seen by the eyes, but goes back to
that element of reason of which Nature consists
and according to which Nature acts.

491

Further, the Arts also produce much out of
themselves, and, on the other hand, add much
where Nature fails in perfection, in that they
possess beauty in themselves. So it was that
Pheidias could sculpture a god although he
had nothing that could be seen by the eye to
imitate, but grasped the appearance which Zeus
himself would have if he were to come before
our eyes.

174 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

492

Art rests upon a kind of religious sense : it is
deeply and ineradicably in earnest. Thus it is
that Art so willingly goes hand in hand with
Religion.

493

A noble philosopher spoke of architecture as
frozen music ; and it was inevitable that many
people should shake their heads over his
remark. We believe that no better repetition
of this fine thought can be given than by calling
architecture a speechless music.

494

Art is essentially noble ; therefore the artist
has nothing to fear from a low or common
subject. Nay, by taking it up, he ennobles it ;
and so it is that we see the greatest artists
boldly exercising their sovereign rights.

495

In every artist there is a germ of daring,
without which no talent is conceivable.

496

All the artists who are already known to me
from so many sides, I propose to consider exclu-

LITERATURE AND ART 175

sively from the ethical side; to explain from
the subject-matter and method of their work
the part played therein by time and place,
nation and master, and their own indestructible
personality ; to mould them to what they became
and to preserve them in what they were.

497

Art is a medium of what no tongue can
utter ; and thus it seems a piece of folly to try
to convey its meaning afresh by means of words.
But, by trying to do so, the understanding
gains; and this, again, benefits the faculty in

practice.

498

An artist who produces valuable work is not
always able to give an account of his own or
others' performances.

499

We know of no world except in relation to
mankind ; and we wish for no Art that does not
bear the mark of this relation.

500

Higher aims are in themselves more valuable,
even if unfulfilled, than lower ones quite
attained.

176 MAXIMS AND EEFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

501

Blunt naivety, stubborn vigour, scrupulous
observance of rule, and any other epithets which
may apply to older German Art, are a part of
every earlier and simpler artistic method. The
older Venetians, Florentines, and others had it

all too.

502

Because Albrecht Diirer, with his incompar-
able talent, could never rise to the idea of the
symmetry of beauty, or even to the thought of
a fitting conformity to the object in view, are
we never to spurn the ground !

503

Albrecht Diirer had the advantage of a very
profound realistic perception, an affectionate
human sympathy with all present conditions.
He was kept back by a gloomy phantasy, devoid
both of form and foundation.

5°4

It would be interesting to show how Martin
Schon stands near him, and how the merits of
German Art were restricted to these two ; and
useful also to show that it was not evening
every day.

LITERATURE AND ART 177

505

In every Italian school the butterfly breaks
loose from the chrysalis.

506

After Klopstock released us from rhyme, and
Voss gave us models of prose, are we to make
doggerel again like Hans Sachs ?

507

Let us be many-sided ! Turnips are good, but
they are best mixed with chestnuts. And these
two noble products of the earth grow far apart.

508

In every kind of Art there is a degree of excel-
lence which may be reached, so to speak, by the
mere use of one's own natural talents. But at
the same time it is impossible to go beyond that
point, unless Art comes to one's aid.

5°9

In the presence of Nature even moderate
talent is always possessed of insight ; hence
drawings from Nature that are at all carefully
done always give pleasure.

178 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

510

To make many sketches issue at last in a
complete work is something that not even the
best artists always achieve.

In the sphere of true Art there is no prepara-
tory school, but there is a way of preparation ;
and the best preparation is the interest of the
most insignificant pupil in the work of the
master. Colour-grinders have often made excel-
lent painters.

512

If an artist grasps Nature aright and contrives
to give its form a nobler, freer grace, no one
will understand the source of his inspiration,
and every one will swear that he has taken it
from the antique.

5i3

In studying the human form, let the painter
reject what is exaggerated, false, and mechan-
ical ; but let him learn to grasp of what infinite
grace the human body is capable.

LITERATURE AND ART 179

Kant taught us the critique of the reason.
We must have a critique of the senses if Art in
general, and especially German Art, is ever to
regain its tone and move forward on the path of
life and happiness.

SCIENCE

SCIENCE

515

IN the sphere of natural science let us remember
that we have always to deal with an insoluble
problem. Let us prove keen and honest in
attending to anything which is in any way
brought to our notice, most of all when it does
not fit in with our previous ideas. For it is
only thereby that we perceive the problem,
which does indeed lie in nature, but still more
in man.

5i6

A man cannot well stand by himself, and so
he is glad to join a party; because if he does
not find rest there, he at any rate finds quiet
and safety.

5i7

It is a misfortune to pass at once from obser-
vation to conclusion, and to regard both as of
equal value ; but it befalls many a student.
183

184 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

In the history of science and throughout the
whole course of its progress we see certain
epochs following one another more or less
rapidly. Some important view is expressed, it
may be original or only revived ; sooner or later
it receives recognition ; fellow-workers spring
up ; the outcome of it finds its way into the
schools ; it is taught and handed down ; and we
observe, unhappily, that -it does not in the least
matter whether the view be true or false. In
either case its course is the same ; in either case
it comes in the end to be a mere phrase, a
lifeless word stamped on the memory.

5*9

First let a man teach himself, and then he
will be taught by others.

520

Theories are usually the over-hasty efforts of
an impatient understanding that would gladly
be rid of phenomena, and so puts in their place
pictures, notions, nay, often mere words. We
may surmise, or even see quite well, that such
theories are make-shifts ; but do not passion and

SCIENCE 185

party-spirit love a make-shift at all times ? And
rightly, too, because they stand in so much need
of it.

It is difficult to know how to treat the errors
of the age. If a man oppose them, he stands
alone ; if he surrender to them, they bring him
neither joy nor credit.

522

There are some hundred Christian sects, every
one of them acknowledging God and the Lord
in its own way, without troubling themselves
further about one another. In the study of
nature, nay, in every study, things must of
necessity come to the same pass. For what is
the meaning of everyone speaking of toleration,
and trying to prevent others from thinking and
expressing themselves after their own fashion ?

523

To communicate knowledge by means of
analogy appears to me a process equally useful
and pleasant. The analogous case is not there
to force itself on the attention or prove anything ;
it offers a comparison with some other case, but

186 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

is not in union with it. Several analogous cases
do not join to form a seried row : they are like
good society, which always suggests more than
it grants.

524

To err is to be as though truth did not exist.
To lay bare the error to oneself and others is
retrospective discovery.

525

With the growth of knowledge our ideas
must from time to time be organised afresh.
The change takes place usually in accordance
with new maxims as they arise, but it always
remains provisional.

526

When we find facts within our knowledge
exhibited by some new method, or even, it may
be, described in a foreign language, they receive
a peculiar charm of novelty and wear a fresh
air.

527

If two masters of the same art differ in their
statement of it, in all likelihood the insoluble
problem lies midway between them.

SCIENCE 187

528

The orbits of certainties touch one another;
but in the interstices there is room enough for
error to go forth and prevail.

529

We more readily confess to errors, mistakes,
and shortcomings in our conduct than in our
thought.

530

And the reason of it is that the conscience
is humble and even takes a pleasure in being
ashamed. But the intellect is proud, and if
forced to recant is driven to despair.

This also explains how it is that truths
which have been recognised are at first tacitly
admitted, and then gradually spread, so that
the very thing which was obstinately denied
appears at last as something quite natural.

532

Ignorant people raise questions which were
answered by the wise thousands of years ago.

188 MAXIMS AND EEFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

533
When a man sees a phenomenon before him,

his thoughts often range beyond it; when he
hears it only talked about, he has no thoughts
at all.

534

Authority. Man cannot exist without it, and
yet it brings in its train just as much of error as
of truth. It perpetuates one by one things which
should pass away one by one; it rejects that
which should be preserved and allows it to pass
away ; and it is chiefly to blame for mankind's
want of progress.

535

Authority — the fact, namely, that something
has already happened or been said or decided, is
of great value; but it is only a pedant who
demands authority for everything.

536

An old foundation is worthy of all respect,
but it must not take from us the right to build
afresh wherever we will.

537

Our advice is that every man should remain
in the path he has struck out for himself, and

SCIENCE 189

refuse to be overawed by authority, hampered
by prevalent opinion, or carried away by fashion.

538

The various branches of knowledge always
tend as a whole to stray away from life, and
return thither only by a roundabout way.

539

For they are, in truth, text-books of life:
they gather outer and inner experiences into
a general and connected whole.

540

An important fact, an ingenious aperfu,
occupies a very great number of men, at first
only to make acquaintance with it; then to
understand it; and afterwards to work it out
and carry it further.

54i

On the appearance of anything new the mass
of people ask: What is the use of it? And
they are not wrong. For it is only through
the use of anything that they can perceive its
value.

190 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

542

The truly wise ask what the thing is in itself
and in relation to other things, and do not
trouble themselves about the use of it, — in
other words, about the way in which it may be
applied to the necessities of existence and what
is already known. This will soon be discovered
by minds of a very different order — minds that
feel the joy of living, and are keen, adroit, and
practical.

543

Every investigator must before all things
look upon himself as one who is summoned to
serve on a jury. He has only to consider how
far the statement of the case is complete and
clearly set forth by the evidence. Then he
draws his conclusion and gives his vote, whether
it be that his opinion coincides with that of the
foreman or not.

544

And in acting thus he remains equally at ease
whether the majority agree with him or he finds
himself in a minority. For he has done what
he could : he has expressed his convictions ;
and he is not master of the minds or hearts of
others.

SCIENCE 191

545

In the world of science, however, these senti-
ments have never been of much account. There
everything depends on making opinion prevail
and dominate ; few men are really independent ;
the majority draws the individual after it.

546

The history of philosophy, of science, of
religion, all shows that opinions spread in
masses, but that that always comes to the front
which is more easily grasped, that is to say, is
most suited and agreeable to the human mind
in its ordinary condition. Nay, he who has
practised self-culture in the higher sense may
always reckon upon meeting an adverse
majority.

547

There is much that is true which does not
admit of being calculated; just as there are a
great many things that cannot be brought to
the test of a decisive experiment.

548

It is just for this that man stands so high,
that what could not otherwise be brought to
light should be brought to light in him.

192 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

What is a musical string, and all its mechan-
ical division, in comparison with the musician's
ear? May we not also say, what are the ele-
mentary phenomena of nature itself compared
with man, who must control and modify them
all before he can in any way assimilate them to
himself ?

549

To a new truth there is nothing more hurtful
than an old error.

55°

The ultimate origin of things is completely
beyond our faculties ; hence when we see
anything come into being, we look upon it as
having been already there. This is why we
find the theory of emboitement intelligible.

There are many problems in natural science
on which we cannot fittingly speak unless we
call metaphysics to our aid ; but not the wisdom
of the schools, which consists in mere verbiage.
It is that which was before physics, exists with
it, and will be after it.

SCIENCE 193

552

Since men are really interested in nothing but
their own opinions, every one who puts forward
an opinion looks about him right and left for
means of strengthening himself and others in it.
A man avails himself of the truth so long as it
is serviceable ; but he seizes on what is false
with a passionate eloquence as soon as he can
make a momentary use of it ; whether it be to
dazzle others with it as a kind of half-truth, or
to employ it as a stopgap for effecting an
apparent union between things that have been
disjointed. This experience at first caused me
annoyance, and then sorrow; and now it is
a source of mischievous satisfaction. I have
pledged myself never again to expose a
proceeding of this kind.

553

Everything that we call Invention or Dis-
covery in the higher sense of the word is the
serious exercise and activity of an original feel-
ing for truth, which, after a long course of silent
cultivation, suddenly flashes out into fruitful
knowledge. It is a revelation working from

194 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

within on the outer world, and lets a man feel
that he is made in the image of God. It is a
synthesis of World and Mind, giving the most
blessed assurance of the eternal harmony of
things.

554

A man must cling to the belief that the
incomprehensible is comprehensible; otherwise
he would not try to fathom it.

555

There are pedants who are also rascals, and
they are the worst of all.

556

A man does not need to have seen or experi-
enced everything himself. But if he is to com-
mit himself to another's experiences and his
way of putting them, let him consider that he
has to do with three things — the object in
question and two subjects.

557

The supreme achievement would be to see
that stating a fact is starting a theory.

SCIENCE 195

558

If I acquiesce at last in some ultimate fact of
nature, it is, no doubt, only resignation ; but it
makes a great difference whether the resigna-
tion takes place at the limits of human faculty,
or within the hypothetical boundaries of my
own narrow individuality.

559

If we look at the problems raised by Aristotle,
we are astonished at his gift of observation.
What wonderful eyes the Greeks had for many
things ! Only they committed the mistake of
being overhasty, of passing straightway from
the phenomenon to the explanation of it, and
thereby produced certain theories that are quite
inadequate. But this is the mistake of all
times, and still made in our own day.

560

Hypotheses are cradle-songs by which the
teacher lulls his scholars to sleep. The thought-
ful and honest observer is always learning more
and more of his limitations ; he sees that the
further knowledge spreads, the more numerous
are the problems that make their appearance.

196 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

56i

Our mistake is that we doubt what is certain
and want to establish what is uncertain. My
maxim in the study of Nature is this: hold
fast what is certain and keep a watch on what
is uncertain.

562

What a master a man would be in his own
subject if he taught nothing useless !

563

The greatest piece of folly is that every man
thinks himself compelled to hand down what
people think they have known.

564

If many a man did not feel obliged to repeat
what is untrue, because he has said it once, the
world would have been quite different.

565

Every man looks at the world lying ready
before him, ordered and fashioned into a com-
plete whole, as after all but an element out of
which his endeavour is to create a special world

SCIENCE 197

suited to himself. Capable men lay hold of the
world without hesitation and try to shape their
course as best they can; others dally over it,
and some doubt even of their own existence.

The man who felt the full force of this funda-
mental truth would dispute with no one, but
look upon another's mode of thought equally
with his own, as merely a phenomenon. For
we find almost daily that one man can think
with ease what another cannot possibly think at
all ; and that, too, not in matters which might
have some sort of effect upon their common
weal or woe, but in things which cannot touch

them at all.

566

There is nothing more odious than the
majority ; it consists of a few powerful men to
lead the way; of accommodating rascals and
submissive weaklings; and of a mass of men
who trot after them, without in the least
knowing their own mind.

567

When I observe the luminous progress and
expansion of natural science in modern times,
I seem to myself like a traveller going east-

198 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

wards at dawn, and gazing at the growing light
with joy, but also with impatience ; looking for-
ward with longing to the advent of the full and
final light, but, nevertheless, having to turn
away his eyes when the sun appeared, unable
to bear the splendour he had awaited with so
much desire.

568

We praise the eighteenth century for concern-
ing itself chiefly with analysis. The task
remaining to the nineteenth is to discover the
false syntheses which prevail, and to analyse
their contents anew.

569

A school may be regarded as a single indi-
vidual who talks to himself for a hundred
years, and takes an extraordinary pleasure in
his own being, however foolish and silly it
may be.

570

In science it is a service of the highest merit
to seek out those fragmentary truths attained
by the ancients, and to develop them further.

SCIENCE 199

571

If a man devotes himself to the promotion of
science, he is firstly opposed, and then he is
informed that his ground is already occupied.
At first men will allow no value to what we
tell them, and then they behave as if they knew
it all themselves.

572

Nature fills all space with her limitless pro-
ductivity. If we observe merely our own earth,
everything that we call evil and unfortunate is
so because Nature cannot provide room for
everything that comes into existence, and still
less endow it with permanence.

573

Everything that comes into being seeks room
for itself and desires duration : hence it drives
something else from its place and shortens its
duration.

574

There is so much of cryptogamy in phaner-
ogamy that centuries will not decipher it.

200 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

5 75

What a true saying it is that he who wants
to deceive mankind must before all things
make absurdity plausible.

576

The further knowledge advances, the nearer
we come to the unfathomable : the more we
know how to use our knowledge, the better we
see that the unfathomable is of no practical
use.

577

The finest achievement for a man of thought
is to have fathomed what may be fathomed, and
quietly to revere the unfathomable.

578

The discerning man who acknowledges his
limitations is not far off perfection.

579

There are two things of which a man cannot
be careful enough : of obstinacy if he confines
himself to his own line of thought; of incompe-
tency, if he goes beyond it.

SCIENCE 201

580

Incompetency is a greater obstacle to perfec-
tion than one would think.

The century advances ; but every individual
begins anew.

582

What friends do with us and for us is a real
part of our life ; for it strengthens and advances
our personality. The assault of our enemies is
not part of our life ; it is only part of our expe-
rience ; we throw it off and guard ourselves
against it as against frost, storm, rain, hail, or
any other of the external evils which may be
expected to happen.

583

A man cannot live with every one, and there-
fore he cannot live for every one. To see this
truth aright is to place a high value upon
one's friends, and not to hate or persecute one's
enemies. Nay, there is hardly any greater
advantage for a man to gain than to find out,
if he can, the merits of his opponents : it gives1
him a decided ascendency over them.

202 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

584

Every one knows how to value what he has
attained in life ; most of all the man who thinks
and reflects in his old age. He has a comfort-
able feeling that it is something of which no
one can rob him.

585

The best metempsychosis is for us to appear
again in others.

586

It is very seldom that we satisfy ourselves ;
all the more consoling is it to have satisfied
others.

587

We look back upon our life only as on a
thing of broken pieces, because our misses and
failures are always the first to strike us, and
outweigh in our imagination what we have
done and attained.

588

The sympathetic youth sees nothing of this ;
he reads, enjoys, and uses the youth of one who
has gone before him, and rejoices in it with all
his heart, as though he had once been what he
now is.

SCIENCE 203

5%

Science helps us before all things in this, that
it somewhat lightens the feeling of wonder
with which Nature fills us ; then, however, as
life becomes more and more complex, it creates
new facilities for the avoidance of what would
do us harm and the promotion of what will do
us good.

590

It is always, our eyes alone, our way of look-
ing at things. Nature alone knows what she
means now, and what she had meant in the
past.

NATURE: APHORISMS

NATURE: APHORISMS

NATURE ! We are surrounded by her and
locked in her clasp : powerless to leave her,
and powerless to come closer to her. Unasked
and unwarned she takes us up into the whirl
of her dance, and hurries on with us till we are
weary and fall from her arms.

She creates new forms without end: what
exists now, never was before ; what was, comes
not again ; all is new and yet always the old.

We live in the midst of her and are strangers.
She speaks to us unceasingly and betrays not
her secret. We are always influencing her and
yet can do her no violence.

Individuality seems to be all her aim, and she
cares nought for individuals. She is always
building and always destroying, and her work-
shop is not to be approached.
2*7

208 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

Nature lives in her children only, and the
mother, where is she ? She is the sole artist, —
out of the simplest materials the greatest diver-
sity; attaining, with no trace of effort, the
finest perfection, the closest precision, always
softly veiled. Each of her works has an essence
of its own ; every shape that she takes is in idea
utterly isolated ; and yet all forms one.

She plays a drama ; whether she sees it her-
self, we know not ; and yet she plays it for us,
who stand but a little way off.

There is constant life in her, motion and de-
velopment ; and yet she remains where she was.
She is eternally changing, nor for a moment
does she stand still. Of rest she knows nothing,
and to all stagnation she has affixed her curse.
She is steadfast; her step is measured, her
exceptions rare, her laws immutable.

She has thought, and she ponders unceas-
ingly; not as a man, but as Nature. The
meaning of the whole she keeps to herself, and
no one can learn it of her.

NATURE: APHORISMS 209

Men are all in her, and she in all men. With
all she plays a friendly game, and rejoices the
more a man wins from her. With many her
game is so secret, that she brings it to an end
before they are aware of it.

Even what is most unnatural is Nature ; even
the coarsest Philistinism has something of her
genius. Who does not see her everywhere, sees
her nowhere aright.

She loves herself, and clings eternally to her-
self with eyes and hearts innumerable. She has
divided herself that she may be her own delight.
She is ever making new creatures spring up to
delight in her, and imparts herself insatiably.

She rejoices in illusion. If a man destroys
this in himself and others, she punishes him
like the hardest tyrant. If he follows her in
confidence, she presses him to her heart as it
were her child.

Her children are numberless. To no one of
them is she altogether niggardly; but she has
her favourites, on whom she lavishes much, and
for whom she makes many a sacrifice. Over

210 MAXIMS AXD REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

the great she has spread the shield of her
protection.

She spurts forth her creatures out of nothing,
and tells them not whence they come and
whither they go. They have only to go their
way : she knows the path.

Her springs of action are few, but they never
wear out: they are always working, always
manifold.

The drama she plays is always new, because
she is always bringing new spectators. Life is
her fairest invention, and Death is her device
for having life in abundance.

She envelops man in darkness, and urges
him constantly to the light. She makes him
dependent on the earth, heavy and sluggish,
and always rouses him up afresh.

She creates wants, because she loves move-
ment. How marvellous that she gains it all so
easily ! Every want is a benefit, soon satisfied,
soon growing again. If she gives more, it is a

NATURE: APHORISMS 211

new source of desire ; but the balance quickly
rights itself.

Every moment she starts on the longest jour-
neys, and every moment reaches her goal.

She amuses herself with a vain show; but to
us her play is all-important.

She lets every child work at her, every fool
judge of her, and thousands pass her by and see
nothing ; and she has her joy in them all, and
in them all finds her account.

Man obeys her laws even in opposing them:
he works with her even when he wants to work
against her.

Everything she gives is found to be good, for
first of all she makes it indispensable. She
lingers, that we may long for presence; she
hurries by, that we may not grow weary of her.

Speech or language she has none; but she
creates tongues and hearts through which she
feels and speaks.

212 MAXIMS AND REFLECTIONS OF GOETHE

Her crown is Love. Only through Love can
we come near her. She puts gulfs between all
things, and all things strive to be interfused.
She isolates everything, that she may draw
everything together. With a few draughts
from the cup of Love she repays for a life
full of trouble.

She is all things. She rewards herself and
punishes herself ; and in herself rejoices and is
distressed. She is rough and gentle, loving and
terrible, powerless and almighty. In her every-
thing is always present. Past or Future she
knows not. The Present is her Eternity. She
is kind. I praise her with all her works.
She is wise and still. No one can force her
to explain herself, or frighten her into a gift
that she does not give willingly. She is crafty,
but for a good end ; and it is best not to notice
her cunning.

She is whole and yet never finished. As she
works now, so can she work for ever.

To every one she appears in a form of his
own. She hides herself in a thousand names
and terms, and is always the same.

NATURE: APHORISMS 213

She has placed me in this world; she will
also lead me out of it. I trust myself to her.
She may do with me as she pleases. She will
not hate her work. I did not speak of her.
No! what is true and what is false, she has
spoken it all. Everything is her fault, every-
thing is her merit.

INDEX

INDEX

Absent, the, 47.

Absolute, the, 238.

Abstractions, how destroyed,
203.

Absurdities, 229, 575.

Acquaintances, new, 432.

Acquirements, 344.

Acting unlike oneself, 298.

Activity, 342, 368, 372, 401.

JSschylus, saying of, 121.

Age, 391.

Age and Youth, 37, 233-4, 237,
295, 321, 374.

Ages of life, 390.

Agreement and disagreement,
384.

Aims, 278, 342, 500.

Altruism, 167, 214, 583.

Analogies, 46, 523.

Analysis, 568.

Ancient literature, 447.

Ancients, the, 443, 445, 570.

Anthropomorphism, 165.

Antiquities, 325.

Antiquity and posterity, 190.

Architecture, a speechless mu-
sic, 493.

Aristotle, 559.

Art, 492, 494, 499, 508.

Art and Nature, 482-3, 490-1,
509,512.

Art and the World, 485-6.
Artist, the, 495-8.
Artistic criticism, 116.
Assemblies, 281.
Attainable, the, 48.
Attainments, 584, 587.
Authority, 534-7.
Authorship, 418.

Ballads, 477-8.
Beauty, 136, 232, 481.
Bible, the, 457-9.
Books, 417, 420, 432, 456.

Cause and effect, 394.

Century, the, and the individ-
ual, 581.

Character, 367.

Characteristics, 7, 29, 74, 91,
110, 179, 291, 297, 311, 344.

Children, 245-7.

Christ, 314.

Classicism, 462-3.

Clever folly, 175.

Common-sense, 49, 217.

Complications, 45.

Confession of error, 529.

Confidences, 142.

Conscience, 125.

Conscience and intellect, 530.

Contemporaries, 386, 454.

2I7

218

INDEX

Contradictions, 87, 102, 223,

288-9, 378, 382.
Converts, 170.
Criticism, 146, 182, 304, 456.
Critique of common-sense, 393.
Critique of the senses, 514.
Cryptogamy, 574.
Culture, 328-9, 412.

Dangerous men, 275-6.
Debtor and creditor, 282-3.
Deception, 320, 400.
Defects, 39.

Despotism, advantages of, 209.
Dialectic, 379.
Difficulties, 277-8, 330, 398.
Dilettanti, 159.
Discovery, 397, 553.
Dispositions, like and unlike,

380.

Distinctions, 166.
Doggerel, 506.
Doing good, 98.
Diirer, Albrecht, 502-3.
Duties and rights, 150.
Duty, 3, 38, 402.

Eclecticism, 436-7.

Education, 444.

Education, overpressure in,

371.

Eighteenth century, 568.
Emboitement, theory of, 550.
Empirical morality, 140.
Encyclopaedia, the best, 161.
Enemies, 582.
Enemies' merits, 387, 583.
Enthusiasm, 211, 471.
Erasmus, saying of, 63.

Error and half-truth, 59, 61, 72,

564.

Errors of the age, 521.
Excellence unfathomable, 406.
Existence of evil, 572-3.
Experience, 43, 556.

Facts and theories, 557.
Facts and thoughts, 188.
Facts newly stated, 526.
Faith, 117.
False notions, 5, 200.
False tendencies, 64.
Familiarity, 262.
Fashion, 392.
Fastidiousness, 260.
Faults, 296-7, 299, 304-5.
Favour, 83.
Fear, 275.
Figurative sayings :

a leaf and a bird, 359.

an old man warming himself,
363.

blowing the flute, 16.

buttoning one's coat, 362.

curds and cream, 58.

dirt and the sun, 99.

dust and the storm, 66.

frogs and water, 71.

heroes and valets, 272.

Hindoos of the desert, 106.

hitting the nail, 78.

lamps and the light of heav-
en, 361.

lifting the stone, 208.

mankind and the Red Sea,
187.

names for the sea, 95.

snow, 92.

INDEX

219

Figurative sayings :

the Antipodes, disputing
about, 90.

the forester and the tree,
358.

the iron in the smithy, 310.

the millstream, 42.

the rainbow, 115.

the sparrow and the stork,
360.

the world a bell, 158.

turnips and chestnuts, 507.
Flattery, 145, 287, 289.
Fools, 271, 276.
Forethought, 103.
Form, the human, 513.
Freedom and slavery, 268-9.
Friends' defects, 387.
Friendship, 248, 582.
Fulfilment of desire, 228, 267.
Fulfilment of duty, 38.
Future, the, 280.

General ideas, 15, 177.

Generosity, 65.

Genius, 232, 273, 336-9, 425.

Gentle judgments, 124.

German art, 501.

Germans, the, 326.

God, 307, 353.

Godlike, the, 308.

Good advice, 206.

Good manners, 254-7, 263-5.

Good will of others, 34.

Government, the best, 225.

Graceful misery, 126.

Gratitude, 283.

Great ideas, 239, 349, 350-2.

Great men, 274.

Great men and little men, 69,

119, 271.

Great men and the masses, 147.
Greek and Latin, study of, 444,

446.

Greek and Latin writers, 469.
Greek art, 484.
Greeks, the, 189, 443, 559.

Habit, 129.

Hatred and envy, 130.

Hearing and understanding,

383.

High positions, 335.
Historian's duty, the, 452-3,

455.

Historic sense, 450.
History, 80, 451.
History of knowledge, 55.
Honour and rascality, 144.
Hope, 194, 280, 315.
Hypotheses, 560.

Ideals, 141, 348.

Ideas and sensations, 93.

Ignorance, 231.

Illusions, 186.

Imagination, how regulated,
489.

Imprudence, 50, 105.

Incompetence and imperfec-
tion, 17, 18.

In competency, 579-80.

Individuals and the age, 201,
581.

Influencing one's age, 365.

Ingratitude, 152.

Inquiry, limits of, 327, 554, 558,
576-7.

220

INDEX

Insight, 370.
Intelligence, 322.
Intention, 334.

Interest in public events, 331.
Introspection, 75.
Investigator, the true, 543-4.
Irregular circumstances, 143.
Isolation of the good, 224.
Italian art, 505.

Judgment, 85-6.
Justice and law, 54.

Kepler, saying of, 354.
Knowledge, 235, 324, 370, 525-6,

538.

Knowledge and doubt, 178.
Knowledge and new ideas, 82.
Knowledge, branches of, 539.
Knowledge of one another, 67-

70, 251-3.
Knowledge, the contempt for,

113.

Language and thought, 317, 407.

Languages, knowledge of, 414.

Laws, 321.

Laws, study of, 168.

Lessing, saying of, 52.

Lessons, 139.

Liberal ideas, 174, 375.

Liberality, the truest, 385.

Life, the art of, 101, 192, 282,

584.

Limitations, 578.
Literature a fragment, 404-5.
Literature, corrupt, 465-7.
Literature, new, 409.
Love, 195, 270.

Love of truth, 28.
Loving one's like, 180.
Lucidity, 413.
Lyrics, 421.

Majorities, 544-6, 566.
Malignance of scholars, 135.
Man and his organs, 347.
Masters, 94, 310.
Mastery, 204.

Matter, contents and form, 183.
Maxims and anecdotes, 156.
Maxims of the ancients, 438-

42.

Means and end, 11.
Mediocrity, 221, 273.
Memoirs, 149.
Memory, 157.
Men and women, 226, 295.
Metaphysics, 551.
Metempsychosis, the best, 585.
Method in art and knowledge,

112.

Mischief, 160.
Misfortunes, 227.
Mistakes, 13, 40, 153, 162, 210,

218, 285-6, 524, 561.
Misunderstanding, 122.
Moment, the, a kind of public,

369.

Monarchs and the press, 375.
Moods, 100.
Morality, 319.
Motive, 10.
Mottoes, 207.
Music, 488.

Mysteries and miracles, 169.
Mysticism, 430.

INDEX

221

Napoleon, 240-1.

National character, 73, 374,

429.

Nature, 572, 590.
Nature and art, 482-3, 490-1,

509, 512.

Nature and culture, 284, 477.
Nature-poets, 419.
Nature, study of, 561.
Newspapers, 23, 375, 461.

Obscurantism, 88.
Obscurity in an author, 431.
Observation and conclusion,

517, 559.
Obstinacy, 579.
Opinions, 107, 552.
Opponents, 381-2.
Opposition, 88.

Originality, 1, 134, 409-11, 536-7.
Origins, 550.
Ovid, 463.

Parties, 616.

Passions, 300-3.

Past, the, 138.

Patience, 357.

Patriotism in art and science,

448.

Patrons, 133.

Paying for one's humanity, 173.
Peace, 53.

Pedantry, 132, 535, 555.
Pereant qui ante nos nostra

dixerunt I 333.
Perfection, 343, 578, 580.
Perseverance, 193, 537.
Perversities of the day, 244.
Pessimism, 131, 184.

Phenomena, how to approach,

399.
Philosophy and the ages of life,

390.

Piety, 35-6.
Plain speaking, 172.
Plans and designs, 12.
Poetical talent, 449.
Poetry, 176.

Posterity, the appeal to, 408.
Power of conviction, 84.
Practical men and thinkers,

395.

Praising a man, 323.
Prayer, 315.
Predestination, 355.
Prejudices, 215.
Primeval powers, 236.
Problem of science, 515, 551.
Problematical natures, 97.
Problematical opinions, 30.
Problematical talents, 171.
Problems, 527.
Productive energy, 164.
Productivity, 415.
Progress and problems, 398.
Progress, conflicts of, 219.
Progress of science, 567.
Propaedeutics, 212, 511.
Protestants, 205.
Prudent energy, 16.
Psychology, 433.
Public, the, 96, 369, 389, 416,

541.

Questions, 532.

Reason, 4.

Reformation, the, 313, 316.

222

INDEX

Religion, 312.
Religious controversy, 460.
Renaissance, the, 313.
Revolution, saying on the, 373.
Revolutionary sentiments, 216.
Rhythm, 131.
Riddles, 62.
Ridiculous, the, 291-4.
Right, doing what is, 77.
Rocks of offence, 306.
Roland, Madame, 403.
Romances, 422.
Romantic landscape, 480.
Romanticism, 462, 464.

Sakontala, 472.
Satisfaction, 586.
Scepticism, 340-1.
Schiller, Goethe and, 434-5.
Scholar, the real, 309.
Schon, Martin, 504.
Schools of thought, 569.
Science : its course, 518, 540-1,

515-6, 567, 570-1, 589.
Science : its problem, 515.
Sects, 522.
Self-appreciation, 20, 56, 111,

249, 366.

Self-guidance, 21-2, 24-5, 33.
Self-knowledge, 2.
Senses, 345-6.

Senses, false tendencies of, 487.
Sentimental poetry, 423.
Sentimentality, national, 429.
Service, 196.
Shakespeare, 473-5.
Silence, 32.

Sincerity and impartiality, 151.
Sketch s, 510.

Society, 250.

Society, soldiers and civilians

in, 258-9.

Society, the best, 230, 289.
Soporifics, 76.
Sowing and reaping, 279.
Spectacles, 261.
Speech, 382.

Speech and language, 123.
Speech and writing, 377.
Speeches, 287.
Spinozism in poetry, 427.
Steady activity, 154.
Sterne, 476.
Subordination, 191.
Success in the world, 6, 19, 368.
Superiority of another, 270.
Superstition, 31, 424.
Symbolism, 202.

Tact, 26-7.
Tattle, 148.
Tattooing, 79.
Teaching, 519, 562-3.
Theatre, effect of the, 197.
Theory, 44, 520, 557.
Theory and experience, 198.
"Things of another world,"

242-3.

Thinkers, 416.
Thinking for oneself, 8.
Thoroughness, 41.
Thought, 1, 396, 412, 533, 563.
Thoughts at the close of life,

403.

Timon, saying of, 127.
Toleration, 356.
Tradition, 392, 563.
Tragedies, 470.

INDEX

223

Translation, 426, 479.

Troubles, 104.

Truth, 14, 28, 60, 120, 163, 336,

531, 547, 553.
Truth and error, 108-9, 137, 185,

199, 213, 468, 528, 549, 552.
Truth to oneself and others,

337.
Tyranny of great ideas, 51.

Ultimate facts, 558.
Unconditioned, striving after

the, 372.

Understanding, 81, 383, 388.
Unfathomable, the, 576-7.
Unities, the three, 428.
Unjust blame, 96.
Unqualified activity, 9.
Use and value, 541-2.

Value of each day, 332.
Vanitas vanitatum ! 114.

Vanity, 376.

Veni Creator Spiritus, 425.

Visitors, 252-3.

Voluntary dependence, 266.

Vulgarity, 222.

Wisdom of this world, 307.

Wishing people well, 128.

Will, 324.

Word and picture, 155.

Words of praise and blame,
468.

Work, 57.

Work for the past and the fut-
ure, 364.

Work, how it limits us, 220.

World, the, 158, 565.

Worthiest lot, the, 342.

Youth, 588.

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VOLUME I. — Dante — The Cathedral Builders.
VOLUME II. — Savonarola — The Piagnoni Painters.

" The studies of character are lifelike and fair, and the
narrative portions are full of picturesque touches. . . .
The book is beautifully illustrated with woodcuts after
drawings of Florentine buildings, statues, and paintings."

— The Athenaum.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York

Vlll

The Golden Treasury

Selected from the best songs and lyrical

poems in the English language and

arranged with notes

BY
FRANCIS T. PALGRAVE

Late Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford

Revised and Enlarged

" This little collection differs, it is believed, from
others in the attempt made to include in it all the
best original lyrical pieces and songs in our language
(save a very few regretfully omitted on account of
length) by writers not living, and none besides the
best."

The Golden Treasury

SECOND SERIES

Selected from the best songs and lyrical

poems in the English language and

arranged with notes

BY
FRANCIS T. PALGRAVE

Late Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford

Revised and Enlarged

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York

A Trip to England

By GOLDWIN SMITH

Author of " The United Kingdom," " The United
States," etc.

" A delightful little work, telling in a most charm-
ingly rambling yet systematic way what is to be seen
of interest in England." — Chicago Times.

" The book makes an entertaining and useful
companion for travellers in England."

— Boston Herald*

Oxford and her Colleges

A View from the Eadcliffe Library

By GOLDWIN SMITH

" The writer has seldom enjoyed himself more
than in showing an American friend over Oxford.
He has felt something of the same enjoyment in
preparing, with the hope of interesting some Ameri-
can visitors, this outline of the history of the Uni-
versity and her colleges."

— From the Authors Preface.

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64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York
xi

LIFE AND ART OF

EDWIN BOOTH

By WILLIAM WINTER

" It is a wholly successful piece of biographical
writing, and a worthy picture of the beautiful char-
acter of one of the Americans concerning whose
right to be called a genius there will be no dispute."
— Philadelphia Inquirer.

" At once tender and reverent, written with the
grace, fervor, and beauty of diction which character-
ize this critic's work. It is a fascinating and able
book." — Hartford Courant.

OLD SHRINES AND IVY

By WILLIAM WINTER

" Whatever William Winter writes is marked by
felicity of diction and by refinement of style, as well
as by the evidence of culture and wide reading.
' Old Shrines and Ivy * is an excellent example of the
charm of his work." — Boston Courier.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York

Shadows of the Stage

FIRST SERIES
By WILLIAM WINTER

"There is in these writings the same charm of
style, poetic glamour, and flavor of personality which
distinguishes whatever comes to us from Mr. Win-
ter's pen, and which makes them unique in our
literature." — New York Home Journal.

Shadows of the Stage

SECOND SERIES
By WILLIAM WINTER

" Mr. Winter has long been known as the fore-
most of American dramatic critics, as a writer of very
charming verse, and as a master in the lighter veins
of English prose." — Chicago Herald.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York
xiv

Shadows of the Stage

THIRD SERIES
By WILLIAM WINTER

" He has the poise and sure judgment of long experi-
ence, the fine perception and cultured mind of a litttra-
teur and man of the world, and a command of vivid and
flexible language quite his own. One must look far for
anything approaching it in the way of dramatic criti-
cism ; only Lamb could write more delightfully of actors
and acting. . . . Mr. Winter is possessed of that quality
invaluable to a play-goer, a temperament finely recep-
tive, sensitive to excellence ; and this it is largely which
gives his dramatic writings their value. Criticism so
luminous, kindly, genial, sympathetic, and delicately
expressed fulfils its function to the utmost."

— Milwaukee Sentinel.

Shakespeare's England

By WILLIAM WINTER

11 He offers something more than guidance to the
American traveller. He is a convincing and eloquent
interpreter of the august memories and venerable sanc-
tities of the old country." — Saturday Review.

"The book is delightful reading."

— Scribner's Monthly.

"Enthusiastic and yet keenly critical notes and com-
ments on English life and scenery." — Scotsman.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York
xv

AMIEL'S JOURNAL

The Journal Intime of Henri-Frederic Amiel
Translated, with an Introduction and Notes

By Mrs. HUMPHRY WARD

Author of " The History of David Grieve," etc., etc.

"A wealth of thought and a power of expression
which would make the fortune of a dozen less able
works." — Churchman.

14 A work of wonderful beauty, depth, and charm. . . .
Will stand beside such confessions as St. Augustine's
and Pascal's. ... It is a book to converse with again
and again ; fit to stand among the choicest volumes that
we esteem as friends of our souls." — Christian Register.

The Friendship of Nature

A New England Chronicle of Birds and Flowers

By MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT

Author of " Birdcraft," " Tommy Anne and the Three
Hearts," etc., etc.

"A charming chronicle it is, abounding in excellent
descriptions and interesting comment."

— Chicago Evening Journal.

11 The author sees and vividly describes what she sees.
But more, she has rare insight and sees deeply, and the
most precious things lie deep."

— Boston Daily Advertiser.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York
xvi

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